Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center
Lebanon, New Hampshire

Medical Waste Composition and Quantity Analysis

DSM Environmental Services was retained by the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to review the existing waste handling methods and waste composition of this large regional teaching hospital and clinic. The medical center was in the process of design and construction of a new facility and required the waste quantity and composition study to determine if the proposed medical waste incinerator was of adequate size and technology.

The waste study involved a review of the entire 80 department medical facility, dividing the various services into logical subsets for waste composition purposes. DSM identified 39 unique "areas" and used these areas to identify the source, quantity and composition of the waste generated within the facility.

The 39 areas were individually surveyed to record the activity taking place in the area, what supplies were used and discarded by the activity, and samples of the supplies were obtained for reference purposes. Once this was accomplished, a 36-hour waste weighing program was performed which weighed every bag of waste generated during the period. The weight from each area was calculated and using the composition of the waste determined from the surveys, a BTU value of total waste generated was calculated to determine the sizing of the medical waste incinerator.

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