5.1   Medical/Biohazardous Waste Transportation, Treatment, and Disposal 

LBNL subcontracts with a vendor to transport, treat, and dispose of all medical waste generated on-site and at Donner, the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), the Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU), and the Potter Street Facility. Only this vendor is licensed to transport medical waste off-site. LBNL employees must not transfer medical waste to or from off-site locations.

The medical/biohazardous waste collected in gray containers is autoclaved, and the pathological waste collected in red containers is incinerated. After treatment, the waste is disposed of in a landfill. Medical waste is autoclaved in some laboratories before it is put into the pickup containers. Autoclaving in the laboratory may be done as an added safety precaution or requirement in some cases, but cannot be considered final treatment. Medical waste must be treated by a licensed treatment facility before it is legally considered noninfectious. LBNL does not have a license to treat medical waste; therefore, all medical waste autoclaved on-site must still be disposed of through the medical/biohazardous waste vendor.

5.2   Medical Waste Pickup Schedule

Currently, medical waste is picked up every Wednesday morning from the hill sites and Donner for off-site treatment and disposal. The Potter Street Facility has medical waste picked up on Thursday mornings. Biohazardous waste from JBEI and the ABPDU is picked up on Tuesdays. All regulated waste (anything in a red biohazard bag) must be brought to a medical waste pickup site on a weekly basis, before the scheduled pickup, and placed in a pickup container. It is necessary to remove the regulated medical waste and regulated full sharps containers from your laboratory every week, at the scheduled time, to comply with the California Medical Waste Management Act. Regulated pathological waste may be stored in a freezer for up to 90 days, but it is a best-management practice to transfer the waste from the freezer to the pickup container within seven days.

You can usually wait to dispose of a sharps container until it is 2/3 full. However, if you work in a laboratory that uses red biohazard bags for the accumulation containers and you place blood vials containing fluid blood in a sharps container, then the sharps container must be disposed of within seven days, whether or not the sharps container is full.