These guidelines describe procedures to comply with
all federal and state laws and regulations and Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (LBNL) policy applicable to state-regulated medical waste as well as
unregulated biohazardous waste (medical/biohazardous waste). These guidelines
apply to all LBNL personnel who
·
Generate and/or
store medical/biohazardous waste or
·
Supervise personnel
who generate medical/biohazardous waste
Personnel generating biohazardous waste at the Joint
Genome Institute (JGI) are referred to the guidelines in Section 9. Section 9 is the only
part of these guidelines that apply to JGI.
“Medical/biohazardous waste” at LBNL is defined as biohazardous, sharps, pathological, or liquid waste. Procedures for proper storage and disposal are summarized in
the Solid Medical/Biohazardous Waste Disposal
Procedures Chart. Contact your assigned Waste Management Group (WMG)
Generator Assistant if you have any questions regarding medical/biohazardous
waste management.
1.1 Generator Responsibilities
If you are a generator of medical/biohazardous waste,
then your responsibilities (as described in more detail in subsequent sections)
include:
- Attending a Medical/Biohazardous Waste Training class (EHS0730)
- Characterizing your medical/biohazardous waste (i.e., knowing
what type of medical/biohazardous waste you have and whether it is also
chemically hazardous or radioactive)
- Segregating and
physically separating medical/biohazardous waste from other waste streams
(e.g., hazardous or radioactive waste)
- Properly storing medical/biohazardous waste in containers lined with red or
clear biohazardous bags
- Properly storing sharps waste in red
sharps containers
- Moving medical/biohazardous waste and full sharps containers into medical waste
pickup containers for pickup by an outside contractor
- Maintaining documentation on the processes or experiments that generate
medical/biohazardous waste
Medical/biohazardous waste at LBNL is defined as
waste that requires inactivation of the biological material in an approved
manner prior to final disposal, and includes but is not limited to the
following discarded items:
- Human
cells and tissues
- Organisms
or cells with recombinant DNA
- Cultures
and stocks of infectious agents
- Potentially
infectious agents (e.g., bacteria, viruses, fungi, prions)
- Biological
material that may contain potentially infectious agents
- Toxins (e.g., snake venom)
- Live and
attenuated vaccines
- Blood,
blood products, and other potentially infectious materials that may
contain human blood-borne pathogens
- Carcasses
and tissues
- Soil,
plants, and pathogens controlled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA)
- Labware
and other items that have come into contact with the aforementioned waste
steams (e.g., contaminated plastic pipettes, pipette tips, petri dishes,
centrifuge tubes, eppendorf tubes, disposable gloves, and wipes)
Infectious material is defined as material capable of
transmitting pathogenic microorganisms, their toxins, or prions that may cause
disease or injury in healthy human adults. Biologicals are medicinal
preparations made from living organisms and their products including serums,
vaccines, antigens, and antitoxins.
