Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

Hip With the Times - July 2017 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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to work. Some manufacturers claim that their products need only 2 minutes to do the job, but reports call that into question, suggesting that some solidifiers can take up to 10 minutes to solidify completely. You may even find yourself still dealing with some dangerous liq- uids, because solidifiers sometimes fail to fully solidify canisters that are filled to the brim (some facilities find upon investigation that staff are pouring more than one package of solidifying agent into each container because they feel that one package doesn't do the job). And of course there are significant environmental implications — not only with the solidifying agents themselves, which may con- tain powdered chlorine and powdered glutaraldehyde — but also with the disposal of the canisters, which become part of the regulat- ed medical waste stream. If the waste goes into a landfill, the plastic takes hundreds of years to break down and may leave environmental toxins behind. If it's incinerated, some of the petrochemicals used in the plastics have the potential to create and release dioxins, which are very potent car- cinogens. Quick ROI? Fortunately, our municipal water systems are designed to deal with biological hazards, which makes the direct-to-drain alternative that much more attractive. Still, it's important to do due diligence and check with state and local authorities. Some locales may not allow direct-to-drain disposal, in which case you'd have to dispose of waste offsite. (In those Thinking of Buying … TB 1 6 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J U L Y 2 0 1 7

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