Ozone Decontamination for Biohazard Waste

[Ryan Weeks]

Great to see so many people from this group at I21SL last week! Passing along a message from one of my colleagues, looking to see if anyone has any knowledge/experience with Ozone decontamination of RMW/biohazardous waste.

 

Curious if anyone has any experience or knowledge of using ozone to decontaminate biohazard waste. We currently send our biohazard waste for one campus to a facility that incinerates waste and some to a facility that autoclaves and then landfills. The company we are looking into BioHaz Solutions utilizes ozone and then landfills the waste. We'd like to compare our current practices with this alternative with regard to GHG emissions, water use, and any other human or environmental health impacts. We also plan to factor in the differences in transportation distances as the material will be transported varying distances for each using a diesel truck.

 

If you aren't aware, this is partially in response to the recent guilty plea by Curtis Bay Energy for environmental crimes including overloading their incinerator that resulted in "uncooked" waste being sent to a landfill and illegal discharge of water. If your institution generates biohazard waste I would encourage you to look into how it is handled and what ecological and environmental justice impacts may result from it and whether you have alternative processing/disposal options. Honestly, that should be done with any kind of waste but this special waste stream in particular. 

 

Speaking of, if you have contract language that requires transparency in disposal and/or requirements for site visits or any other QA measures please share that as well.

 

Thanks in advance for any knowledge/experience you can share!

 

Ryan Weeks, PhD (he/him)

Green Labs Specialist | Office of Sustainability

Johns Hopkins University

3910 Keswick Road | Suite N-3100 | Baltimore, MD

 

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