Environmental Waste Management of Disposable Surgical Coverage

Abstract

The sustainable direction in the field of patient and medical staff health safety is the use of disposable medical devices, including disposable surgical masks, as recommended by the actual European standard. Disposable surgical coverage is the result of cooperation between medical professional workplaces worldwide and professionals in the area of nonwovens and lamination of material. Various variants were developed, tested and then rejected and then finally reach the material and variant composition. The use of disposable medical devices in healthcare is now a common practice, but also an environmental problem on a global scale. Despite the widespread adoption of this best practice, many healthcare facilities and patients still register resistance and scepticism against this form, actually also in connection with protection against COVID-19. The promoted opinion also by research-confirmed opinion is that the disposable form significantly reduces the amount of regulated medical waste that is generated during surgical procedures, subsequent sterilization and in the framework of protection against COVID-19. At the same time, logistical modeling of the best practice of environmental management in waste management remains a problem for the future.

The Characterization of Slovinky Sludge Bed Material Using Spectroscopic Methods

“…The Slovinsky sludge bed is the highest sludge bed in Slovakia (113 m from the foot of the dam). The amounts of stored flotation sludge are estimated at 4.8 million m 3 . The gray-to-black colored material consists of fine grains of metals and their oxidation products from the flotation separation of ore concentrates.…”

“…Environmental burdens are areas contaminated by various industrial activities. They are carried over to the present and remain a problem as an environmental debt in the sustainable development of society in the EU and in regions of Slovakia [3]. Heaps and sludge beds are remnants from mining and mineral processing activities.…”

“…Petrak [9] monitored the leachability of selected potentially toxic elements from anthropogenic material at the Slovinky sludge bed. According to Laubertova and Gerhartova [3], the Slovinky sludge bed has usable metal-bearing potential and they recommended hydrometallurgical processing. However, this requires a more detailed survey of the chemical and mineralogical composition, technical construction, and qualitative and quantitative conditions.…”