Medical and Infectious Waste Management

There is no uniform national standard for defining the wastes that comprise the regulated medical waste (RMW) stream. Based on the variability associated with infectious disease causation, no method exists to determine the potential “infectivity” posed by RMW. Because of this, regulated medical waste definitions developed by the various federal, state, and local government entities are based on the agencies' judgments of risk from the perspective of the jurisdiction to which the definition will apply. It then becomes the responsibility of the regulated community to recognize the various agencies with jurisdiction over definitions and to address the definitional elements of each, recognizing and addressing the inconsistencies that may exist.