“Best practice” clinical waste management plans proposed
Storage of waste medicines without European Waste Catalogue codes
will be regarded as poor practice |
Consultation (PDF 430K) has started on a new unified approach to the classification and
handling of health care waste in England and Wales.
The Department of Health says that the proposed approach is not mandatory
but that it will be considered to be best practice. It will ensure that
waste producers comply with, and go beyond, minimum regulatory requirements.
The plan is to replace current ways of classifying waste in health care
with a system of colour codes — orange boxes labelled “solid” or “liquid” in
the case of waste medicines — to be used alongside the European
Waste Catalogue (EWC) codes that are already required on all waste transfer
documentation.
The proposed guidance will require all waste medicines to be disposed
of by incineration. Medicines, whether or not they are in their original
packaging, will have to be kept and transported in accordance with current
guidelines, but labelled with the new EWC codes. The EWC codes applicable
to medicines are 18 01 08 in the case of cytotoxic and cytostatic agents
and 18 01 09 for other medicines.
The consultation document includes pharmacy in a list of sectors from
which specific contributions are invited to inform the development of
a set of sector guides.
The proposal is open for comment until 7 February 2006. Details of how
to submit comments are available here |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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