Medical Wastes

Hospitals use special care in disposing of wastes contaminated with blood and tissue, separating these hazardous wastes from ordinary waste. Hospitals and doctors' offices must be especially careful with needles, scalpels, and glassware, called “sharps.” Pharmacies discard outdated and unused drugs; testing laboratories dispose of chemical wastes. Medicine also makes use of significant amounts of radioactive isotopes for diagnosis and treatment, and these substances must be tracked and disposed of carefully.

The best way to eliminate hazardous wastes is not to generate them in the first place. For example, improvements have been made in the production of integrated circuits: The toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons commonly used in the 1970s were replaced in the 1980s by less toxic glycol ethers and in the 1990s by low-toxicity esters and alcohols.

Recycling is the recovery or reuse of usable materials from waste. About 5 percent of hazardous waste in the United States is recycled as solvents; a similar amount is recovered as metals.
For example, approximately 15 percent of sulfuric acid is recycled in chemical manufacturing. In the past, most sulfur used for sulfuric acid production was mined; now the amount of sulfur recovered from smelters (facilities that remove metals from ores), refineries (facilities that purify substances), and manufacturers is more than double that produced by mining.

In the United States, the practice of using industrial wastes, which often contain hazardous wastes, as ingredients in commercial fertilizers is encouraged as a means of recycling hazardous wastes. The safety of this practice has recently been called into question, however, and some states are starting to regulate it.