An approach to assess and identify polymers in the health-care waste of a Brazilian university hospital

This work presents the health-care waste (HCW) management and an approach to assess and identify polymers in a General Surgery Unit - Internment Service (GSU) of a Brazilian university hospital, to estimate the main polymers presenting in medical devices that are consumed during a year, discarded ei...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of environmental science and health. Part A, Toxic/hazardous substances & environmental engineering Toxic/hazardous substances & environmental engineering, 2020-06, Vol.55 (7), p.800-819
Main Authors: Lourenço, Joana B., Pasa, Thiana S., Bertuol, Daniel A., Salau, Nina P. G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Calorimetry
Cellulose
Differential Scanning Calorimetry
Elastomers
Electronic devices
Fourier transforms
Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
Functional groups
Health care
Health-care waste assessment
High density polyethylenes
hospital
Infrared spectroscopy
Medical electronics
Medical equipment
Melting point
Melting points
Metals
Polyethylene
Polymers
Polypropylene
Polystyrene
Polystyrene resins
Residues
Surgery
Waste management
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This work presents the health-care waste (HCW) management and an approach to assess and identify polymers in a General Surgery Unit - Internment Service (GSU) of a Brazilian university hospital, to estimate the main polymers presenting in medical devices that are consumed during a year, discarded either as infecting (Group A) or as scarifying residue (Group E). Among the waste produced from the medical devices, 3.14 ton (98.79%) were composed of polymers (63.06% of plastics and 35.73% elastomers) while around 0.03 ton (1.21%) by metals. The proposed approach is composed of 4 steps: (1) Collecting data about consumed medical devices to be categorized into the residues Groups (A and E); (2) Identifying the polymeric composition with information provided by suppliers; (3) Characterizing the polymer functional groups by Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and (4) Determining the polymer melting point by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). According to the results, the analyzed HCW was composed mainly of polypropylene (80.88%), high-density polyethylene (5.28%), polystyrene (4.51%), and cellulose (3.58%), from a total of 11 different polymers.
ISSN:1093-4529
1532-4117
DOI:10.1080/10934529.2020.1744405