Pharmacy Disposal of Waste

Hazardous Waste at Pharmacy The pharmaceutical business generates some waste that is considered to be hazardous. Some of this waste is in the form of drugs that are dangerous. Up until this point, a lot of the regulations surrounding the handling of these drugs has come from OSHA, and thus the regulations pertain to occupational safety, rather than environmental safety. OSHA has had recommendations for the safe handling of dangerous drugs for at least thirty years.

Most hazardous drugs are cytotoxic, but some others are also potentially harmful, among them drugs for chemotherapy (Polovich, 2004). Current Regulations The current regulations at the federal level are from OSHA and are designed to protect the people who either produce or dispense pharmaceuticals that fall into the hazardous class (Connor & McDiarmmid, 2006). Chemotherapy agents, for example, have been linked to secondary leukemia and other cancers (Polovich, 2004). When OSHA brought in its guidelines, however, this also reduced the concern in the industry about the hazards that these drugs present.

What few studies existed were conducted on environmental hazards from a workplace point-of-view, such as measuring the amount of cyclophosphamide found in pharmacies during testing (Polovich, 2004). Studies on the environmental hazards presented by medical wastes tend to focus on things other than drugs, and are usually focused on developing nations where standards for disposal of such wastes in inchoate. In the developing world, issues identified included ordinary citizens gaining access to medical waste, including exposure to hazardous drugs, because of poor disposal practices.

The risks, then, where not elaborated in the context of pharmacy workers nor in the context of the environment, only of people who happened to be in the environment (Patwary, O'Hare & Sarker, 2011). EPA Rule The EPA has proposed rules that will govern the disposal of hazardous pharmaceutical wastes, typically meaning chemotherapy drugs or powerful opioids. The rule will affect producers, pharmacies and reverse distributors, essentially any organization or person that is involved in the supply chain or reverse supply chain for these hazardous drugs.

The rule is aimed at ensuring environmental safety, in particular with respect to water, by prohibiting agencies from flushing hazardous wastes down the toilet. According to the EPA, 6400 tons per year of such wastes are flushed through the sewer system (EPA.gov, 2015). The rule will affect both pharmacies and any health care provider that handles such drugs -- the disposal of hazardous drugs in this manner will effectively be prohibited according to the guidelines.

Pharmacies will be affected by the rule to the extent that they made a practice of disposing of hazardous drugs in this way. While many would have already followed safe disposal practices, clearly the EPA felt that there was a need to enact these rules to change the behavior of pharmacies and health care providers across the nation. For those organizations that were previously flushing such drugs through the water system, they will now be expected to dispose of these drugs using other means.

For health care facilities, the change will be less burdensome, as they will already have procedures in place for the handling of dangerous medical waste. Pharmacies will need to invest in these means, and will need to train their staff, as an extension of the training they receive on the handling of these drugs, to dispose of them using approved methods. This will increase costs to pharmacies somewhat, a trade-off that the EPA feels is just in return for keeping hazardous chemicals out of the environment. Hazardous Waste vs.

Hazardous Material All hazardous wastes are hazardous materials, but not all hazardous materials are hazardous wastes. The definition of what is hazardous does not change between these two, but the distinction is rather when a material is still fit for use, or whether it is not. At such point as a hazardous material is no longer fit for use and must be disposed of, it becomes hazardous waste.

Hazardous materials are subject to guidelines with respect to their handling, in particular the OSHA guidelines, and the EPA guidelines specifically concern waste, which is the category of good that will be disposed of. The EPA breaks up the definition of hazardous waste into a number of different categories, including listed wastes, characteristic wastes, universal waste and mixed waste. A pharmacy will need to know into which of these categories its waste should be classified, as that might affect how the waste is disposed of.

Pharmaceuticals are typically going to be understood as universal wastes under the new rule (EPA.gov, 2015). The new rule builds on a proposed rule from 2008, adding more refined definitions of what is specifically a hazardous waste under law. For the.