Neglecting household biomedical waste management can lead to adverse environmental effects
- November 29, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Neglecting household biomedical waste management can lead to adverse environmental effects
Subject : Environment
Section: Pollution
Context:
- Approximately 2 billion tonnes of waste is generated per annum. The World Bank Group has predicted that solid waste generation will reach about 2.59 billion Mt per annum by the year 2030.
- In developing countries, up to 93% of their waste is estimated to be openly burned or dumped and a small percentage goes to landfills.
Biomedical waste:
- Biomedical waste is the waste generated during the diagnosis, treatment, or immunization of human beings, animals, or research activities. It is generated at healthcare facilities like hospitals and nursing homes.
Domestically generated biomedical wastes:
- It includes unused or expired medicines, cotton swabs covered with blood, used bandages, gauze, pregnancy and blood sugar test kits, insulin injection needles, dirty diapers, sanitary pads, used condoms, x-ray films, expired hand sanitisers and mercury thermometers that have been broken.
- The emergence of epidemics or pandemics, increased access to healthcare, early hospital discharge and home management of chronic illnesses could all play a role in the rise in biomedical waste generation at home. The situation could get worse considering India’s ageing population and dependence on doorstep healthcare services.
- Between 2001 and 2011, the number of needles and sharps in household waste tripled.
- Safe disposal of these wastes:
- Wastes like these require sophisticated chemical processing plants, incinerators and disassembly centres for proper disposal.
- Conventional waste management infrastructure in developing countries is not efficient enough to handle or treat household biomedical waste.
Effects on people, animals, and the environment they share:
- The chemicals from the waste can pollute the air, water, and land. This eventually gives rise to superbugs and antimicrobial resistance.
- Impact on animals:
- The near extinction of vultures in Southeast Asia due to renal failure brought on by exposure to diclofenac (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug).
- Fish in European waterways have experienced disruptions in their sexual development due to exposure to ethinylestradiol (EE2), a component used in oral contraceptives.
- Impact on the environment:
- Migration of leachate (any contaminated liquid produced by water seeping through a waste disposal site) to groundwater discovered heavy metals that were exceeding drinking water standards.
- The soil’s physical and chemical properties close to the dumping sites showed significant contamination with heavy metals and pollutants.
Legislation and accountability:
- Biomedical waste management rules1998 were notified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) under the Environment (Protection) Act, of 1986 (4).
- The Biomedical waste management rules-2016 clearly say that the biomedical waste generated at home during healthcare activities should be segregated and handed over to municipal waste collectors in separate bags or containers.
- These guidelines are not mandatory for the authorities to be followed.
Classification of Biowaste: https://optimizeias.com/biomedical-wastes/