No federal mandate has been developed to define biohazardous waste. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health have definitions that address biohazardous waste handling. Since federal agencies' views differ, states and municipalities have developed their own criteria. Definitions also vary from state to state as to what qualifies as a small biohazardous waste generator. Physicians need to educate their patients and the public about the origins, attributable risks, and handling of biohazardous waste.
Physicians can set an example by exemplary management of their own biohazardous waste.
The expense of biohazardous waste management can be reduced by ensuring that only regulated biohazardous waste is processed as such, and by forming alliances with other medical groups or health care facilities to negotiate group disposal rates with vendors. What the physician needs to know. Arch Fam Med . Available on-line to AMA members only. The following statements, recommended by the Council on Scientific Affairs, were adopted as AMA Policy at the 1997 AMA Interim Meeting.