Community pharmacies should not have to segregate waste
All medicinal waste returned to community pharmacies should be disposed of as if it were hazardous waste, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and the Company Chemists' Association suggest in their responses to the Department of Health consultation
on safe management of health care waste (PJ, 5 November 2005, p564).
The DoH plans to replace current ways of classifying health care waste
with a system of colour codes, which will be used alongside European
Waste Catalogue (EWC) codes. Pharmacy organisations have welcomed the
attempt to simplify and clarify regulations but highlight several concerns.
The DoH proposes that hazardous and non-hazardous waste should be segregated
with hazardous waste given a purple/yellow code and non-hazardous waste
given a yellow code. The PSNC argues that, since medicines are often
mixed before being returned to pharmacies, handling waste to identify
and segregate hazardous from non-hazardous poses too great a risk to
the staff involved. “Therefore the ideal position in community
pharmacy would be for no segregation to take place, and for all medicines
returned from patients to be sent for incineration as if they were hazardous
waste,” it says.
Similar concerns are raised about the classification of sharps. The Royal
Pharmaceutical Society, the CCA and the National Pharmacy Association
believe that pharmacies should not be expected to sort through sharps
to separate those contaminated with hazardous waste and suggest that
one sharps box (yellow with a purple lid) should be used for all sharps.
In contrast, the PSNC believes that sharps handed to a pharmacy in a
patient’s sharps container should not be classified as hazardous
waste.
Cytotoxic and cytostatic medicines are the only medicines classified
as hazardous waste in the EWC. Both the Society and the PSNC state that
if the NHS is to offer constructive guidance to health care providers
about handling waste a definitive list of hazardous waste should be established.
They suggest that this list should contain all products listed in chapter
8 of the British National Formulary.
The responses draw attention to another issue, which was also highlighted
in responses to a Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs consultation
on waste management regulations last month (PJ, 14 January, p32). The
DoH proposes that only a dedicated vehicle should be used to transport
health care waste, something that is not practical for pharmacies, the
PSNC says. “Pharmacies should be permitted to … carry unwanted
medicines presented to them by patients in their own homes or in nursing
or residential homes,” says the CCA. |
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