Re: Disposal of clinical wastes containing radio-isotopes

[carol marcus <csmarcus@ucla.edu>]

At 09:48 AM 7/11/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello,
>  may I have advice on the disposal of radioactive waste containing of
>excreta such as urine and feces in patient diapers in a nuclear medicine
>department. If patient can walk freely to the toilet, then his/her excreta
>can be drained to sewer system easily. But excreta such as urine, vomit or
>even feces causes too much bad smell and hygiene problem in a small
>department with limited storage capacity. Other than radiation hazard,
>bio-chemical bad smell is also a hazard too. What is the threshold level or
>break-even point for the danger level/annoyance level for bio-chemical
>wastes to equalize with say 40kBq/article in a routine disposal limit.
>   Tnank you for everyone who may give me quantitative limit in
>environmental protection aspect.
>
>
>Dear Radsafers:

Why not just rinse out the diapers in the toilet, the way we did in the old
days before disposable diapers?  If you mop up vomitus with chux or towels,
you can do the same with those.  I've never tried pouring some disinfectant
into the toilet as a final "rinse", but that might decrease the smell.  Then
store in ziploc bags until you throw them out.  The patients send them right
to the garbage dump; why can't you?  Most sanitary landfills, even if they
have radiation detectors, have learned to ignore the short-lived
radionuclides used in nuclear medicine.  And, with some rinses in the
toilet, the radioactivity may be small enough to not even be picked up by
the detectors.  

If you are dealing with outpatients, and somebody tells you you have to
decay out the diapers, give the ziploc bags to the patients and tell them to
throw them out themselves when they get home!  For that matter, take them
home yourself and throw them out.  If the hospital trash is monitored for
radioactivity and your RSO doesn't want anything radioactive in there, just
see to it that they're thrown out somewhere else.  

It's not as though we're talking about a safety issue.  

Ciao, Carol

Carol S. Marcus, Ph.D., M.D.
<csmarcus@ucla.edu>

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