Dental waste management in municipal health clinics in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Objective. To investigate whether municipal health clinics in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, comply with the legal requirements for managing dental wastes. Method. We collected information from 54 of the city's 105 municipal health clinics that provide dental care. At each clinic we interviewed the clinic manager, one dental assistant, and one general assistant. Based on the requirements outlined in the Belo Horizonte Health Waste Management Manual, we assessed characteristics in the following three areas: (1) technical and operational (waste classification and characterization, minimization, segregation, pretreatment, conditioning, collection and internal and external transportation, and external storage); (2) general and organizational (inspection, amount of clinic space, environmental permits, floor plan showing wastegenerating areas, and whether the clinic had a technical specialist responsible for managing the health wastes); and (3) human resources (employee vaccination records and oversight, occupational safety and occupational medicine program, environmental risk prevention program, medical oversight and occupational health program, hospital (clinic) infection control committee, and training in health waste management). Results. The clinics produced an average of 270 liters of solid waste per day. None of the clinics surveyed had a plan for managing health wastes. The only requirements with which all the clinics complied were: segregation of needles and mercury, adequately identified cardboard containers used for disposal of cutting and piercing items, and daily internal collection and transportation of wastes. Conclusions. When the risks associated with each class of waste have not been established, all the wastes should be considered potentially dangerous. Further, a law by itself does not guarantee that the public's health will be protected. Before public agencies impose legal requirements, it is necessary to know if the agencies themselves are capable of enforcing those requirements. Any proposed waste management legislation should be based on scientific research.