All Entries Tagged With: "EPA"

Using your Swiss Army knife on protected health information

Recently on our chat group, Patient Safety Talk, someone raised a question about how to properly dispose of medication bottles that had patient information on them in terms of HIPAA compliance.

My best advice would be to [more]

Go ahead, ask your haulers about regulated medical waste

A lot of the rules regarding regulated medical waste live at the state level, and generally the most knowledgeable folks in the food chain are the medical waste disposal people — in other words, your vendors and haulers.

My consultative advice would be [more]

Hazmat inventory provisions under EC.02.02.01

Environment of care standard EC.02.02.01 talks of maintaining an inventory of hazardous materials and waste.

I’ve been wondering when folks such as you would get around to looking over the revised hazmat standard under EC.02.02.01. After the establishment of the new life safety and emergency management standards for 2009, The Joint Commission did the most tinkering [more]

Lead aprons and hazardous waste disposal

I found myself in an e-mail conversation recently about the disposal of lead radiation aprons and whether there is a hazardous waste or EPA aspect to this activity.

My experience has been [more]

Air pollution control devices may help with upcoming EPA notification

The EPA put a new rule into effect in December that requires hospitals with ethylene oxide (EtO) sterilizers to run full loads.

Partial loads may be run if medically necessary, and in all cases, hospitals must document every sterilizer load and, when loads aren’t full, note the medical reasons. The EPA mandates initial notification of compliance status for existing sterilizers by June 27, 2009.

An EPA brochure on the subject indicates one of the key compliance methods is the use of [more]

Though EPA is proposing pharmaceutical waste changes, pay attention to your state

Pharmaceutical waste, as they say in the industry, is a very sticky wicket. There is certainly a great deal of anticipation that the RCRA restrictions (nice alliteration, eh?) will be relaxed to a degree that is most favorable to hospitals when it comes to this waste (see the January 29 Hospital Safety Connection for a brief rundown of what’s happening).

Basically, universal waste includes [more]