IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/recore/v54y2010i12p1048-1059.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Critical review of medical waste legislation in Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Insa, E.
  • Zamorano, M.
  • López, R.

Abstract

Medical waste is potentially dangerous since it may contain pathogenic agents. As a result, medical waste management requires that institutions take decisions, and implement a wide range of measures in order to reduce health risks. In this respect, many European countries have enacted legislation and good practice guidelines to define, classify, and treat medical waste. In reference to Spain, even though no specific national law has as yet been passed to regulate medical waste management, 13 of its regional governments have adopted regulations concerning medical waste management to guarantee health and environment protection. This paper presents the results of a study of the regional legislation in Spain. In our research, certain differences were detected regarding the criteria used for sorting, collection, storage, transport, treatment, and disposal practices. It was found that these differences in waste management criteria could have health implications as well as environmental and economic consequences, both inside and outside healthcare installations. The paper also proposes a set of general criteria upon which medical waste management should be based. Effective medical waste management should include the following: (i) a clear definition of medical waste and of the scope of legislation concerning it; (ii) basic principles to promote the reduction of the amount of waste generated at a source; (iii) a homogeneous classification of this waste; (iv) the implementation of environment-friendly waste treatment technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Insa, E. & Zamorano, M. & López, R., 2010. "Critical review of medical waste legislation in Spain," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 54(12), pages 1048-1059.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:54:y:2010:i:12:p:1048-1059
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.06.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344910001424
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.06.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tudor, T.L. & Barr, S.W. & Gilg, A.W., 2007. "Linking intended behaviour and actions: A case study of healthcare waste management in the Cornwall NHS," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 1-23.
    2. Woolridge, Anne C. & Phillips, Paul S. & Denman, Anthony R., 2008. "Developing a methodology for the systematic analysis of radioactive healthcare waste generation in an acute hospital in the UK," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 52(10), pages 1198-1208.
    3. Popescu, S. & Misawa, T. & Ohtsu, Y. & Fujita, H. & Sanematsu, S., 2008. "New microwave reactor for paper-based waste neutralization," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 671-677.
    4. Tudor, Terry L., 2007. "Towards the development of a standardised measurement unit for healthcare waste generation," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 319-333.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Çelik, Sefa & Peker, İskender & Gök-Kısa, A. Cansu & Büyüközkan, Gülçin, 2023. "Multi-criteria evaluation of medical waste management process under intuitionistic fuzzy environment: A case study on hospitals in Turkey," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    2. Bujak, Janusz Wojciech, 2015. "Production of waste energy and heat in hospital facilities," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 350-362.
    3. Georgios Giakoumakis & Dorothea Politi & Dimitrios Sidiras, 2021. "Medical Waste Treatment Technologies for Energy, Fuels, and Materials Production: A Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-30, December.
    4. Xuan Luo & Wenzhu Liao, 2022. "Collaborative Reverse Logistics Network for Infectious Medical Waste Management during the COVID-19 Outbreak," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-28, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tudor, T.L. & Bannister, S. & Butler, S. & White, P. & Jones, K. & Woolridge, A.C. & Bates, M.P. & Phillips, P.S., 2008. "Can corporate social responsibility and environmental citizenship be employed in the effective management of waste?," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 764-774.
    2. Harris, B.K. & Probert, E.J., 2009. "Waste minimisation at a Welsh university: A viability study using choice modelling," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 53(5), pages 269-275.
    3. Bilal Khalid & Khurram Shahzad & Muhammad Qaiser Shafi & Pascal Paille, 2022. "Predicting required and voluntary employee green behavior using the theory of planned behavior," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5), pages 1300-1314, September.
    4. Sang M. Lee & DonHee Lee, 2022. "Developing Green Healthcare Activities in the Total Quality Management Framework," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(11), pages 1-20, May.
    5. Dursun, Mehtap & Karsak, E. Ertugrul & Karadayi, Melis Almula, 2011. "Assessment of health-care waste treatment alternatives using fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approaches," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 98-107.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:54:y:2010:i:12:p:1048-1059. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kai Meng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/resources-conservation-and-recycling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.