Survey on quantity and quality of medical wastes in Shahroud city

Solid wastes of medical offices and clinics in many cities still are not well managed which it can put community and environment at risk due to releasing dangerous pathogens. This study was conduct-ed to survey quantity and quality of produced waste in medical offices¡ clinics and laboratories in Shahroud city.
In this cross-sectional study¡ guidelines of source separation and reduction of waste were pre-sented for personnel of studied healthcare service centers involved in solid waste collection¡ and solid wastes produced before and after implementation of source separation and reduction project were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. In this study tow surgery and general medical offices¡ 10 dental offices¡ 5 medical laboratory and 5 clinics were studied.
The mean of total solid waste produced before and after implementation of source separation and reduction project were 112.98 and 105.93 kg/day¡ respectively. The mean of total and infectious solid waste after implementation of the project compared to before implementation of project which reduced up to 6.24 and 14.9 kg/day¡ respectively. The non-infectious wastes increased 7.85 kg/day after implementa-tion of project. The overall decrease in amount of infectious solid waste was 10.42%.
The results of study showed that in addition to reducing the total solid wastes¡ implementa-tion of source separation and reduction project can cause proper management and source reduction of in-fectious wastes; therefore¡ it was resulted in reduction of costs of collection and lead to safe disposal.