Most community labs are such low volume producers of biohazard waste that commercial biohazard waste pickup services won't even bother to engage with them. Hence, it is important for us who work in community labs to know how to decontaminate biohazard waste in a way that meets regulatory requirements, allowing it to be safely disposed of through general office/home trash pickup services.
Key guiding principles:
- Each bag of waste must be clearly identifiable and traceable to a record of how it was decontaminated, by whom, and when. Records must be produceable upon demand, e.g. by an inspector from MA DEP or DPH.
- There must be evidence that the decontamination process effectively kills any cells and destroys any recombinant DNA in the bag.
- For example, BosLab chooses autoclaving as the decontamination method, so there must be some way to assure that for each bag of trash, the correct temperature and pressure is held in the bag contents for at least the minimum time specified in the protocol.
- For BosLab's BSL-1 trash, that is 121°C steam at 15 psig (pounds per square inch relative to ambient atmospheric pressure) for 60 minutes.
- The regulations allow a minimum of 30 minutes but we do 60 minutes to provide a safety factor.
- Items that can puncture waste bags must be boxed or contained so that they won't puncture the bag during handling.
Equipment:
- Autoclave
- Decontamination logbook (format specified by Commonwealth of Massachusetts)
Materials:
- Autoclave-able trash bags
- Temperature-pressure-time indicators:
- 3M Comply SteriGage steam chemical integrator for most batches
- ConFirm biological indicators
- Tracking labels with BosLab contact information
- Pen or permanent marker
- 2 black trash bags
- roll of duct tape