Explaining Biohazardous Waste and Its Examples

 While specific examples of biohazard waste and biohazard waste disposal may range slightly in phrasing, the basic definition of biohazard or hazardous waste is anything that has the potential to injure, infect, or contaminate humans with a deadly agent. Biohazard wastes include:

1. Anatomical waste ranges from surgical specimens to body pieces: This includes specimens or tissues retrieved during autopsies or surgical procedures that are suspected of being contaminated with any infectious pathogen that could endanger human health. This category is frequently referred to as pathological waste or biological waste. Anatomical waste (or pathological waste/biological waste) includes body parts, organs, and tissues (skin, muscle, etc.).
2. Animal waste: Managing corpses, tissues, and fluids. This comprises animal tissues, any animal body, and physiological fluids that, like anatomical waste, may include infectious pathogens harmful to humans.
3. Laboratory Waste: Managing Infectious Microorganisms. Laboratory trash includes specimen cultures, bacteria, parasites, viruses, and other pathogens that pose a danger of contamination, illness, or mortality.
4. Infectious waste includes blood-related waste and excreta. This includes any waste containing human or animal blood, fluids from blood products or components, or objects used in the treatment of animals or people that may be contaminated with infectious agents. Swabs, tissue waste from animals or humans, and excreta are some examples.
5. Sharps Waste: Needles, scalpels, and more. Sharps waste includes needles, scalpels, knives, infusion sets, razor blades, broken glass, and syringes—anything with a sharp edge that can penetrate the skin and contaminate biological material.
6. Solid waste includes contaminated bandages and dressings. Bandages and dressings, for example, are contaminated waste that has come into touch with blood or other bodily fluids. This can also include casts contaminated with sweat or fluids like blood.
7. Drugs and Pharmaceuticals: Chemotherapeutic drugs to expired medications. This category includes barium enemas and trace chemotherapeutic medications. Drugs routinely used to treat cancer are considered cytotoxic (any form of chemical that may endanger living cells).

• Consider this: would you handle an animal's bedding materials in a veterinarian's office, which could be infected with a pathogenic organism, in the same manner you would treat bloody wrappings left on the floor of a trauma unit?
• What about this one? Would you dispose of IV tubing with a needle connected in the same way as you would dispose of surgical waste during an autopsy of a woman who died naturally?
• What do you do with a paper towel that may be contaminated with bodily fluids such as saliva or sweat? It depends, doesn't it? Was it used to clean out a petri dish? Or to remove possibly infected fluids from a person or animal?