Quantity and Composition of Produced Dental Solid Waste in Isfahan, 2011 Publisher



Nafez AH¹ ; Ebrahimi A¹ ; Nejad MH¹ ; Bina B¹ Show Affiliations
Source: International Journal of Environmental Health Engineering Published:2014

Abstract

Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the composition of dental waste coming from six dental health services in Isfahan, Iran. Materials and Methods: From 45 public dental clinics in Isfahan, six public dental health services were selected (three dental clinics and three dental centers). Waste collection took place from October to December 2011. During this period, three samples were collected from each dental clinic and were divided to pre-determined groups manually. Results: In dental centers, the amount of infectious, non-infectious and domestic-type waste accounting for 45.07%, 12.15% and 42.78%, respectively. Whereas in dental clinics the production rates of infectious, non-infectious and domestic-type waste accounting for 52.2%, 8.58% and 39.22%, respectively. Conclusion: Overall, according to the results it can be said that integration of infectious and hazardous waste with general waste leads to the amount of infectious waste appears much greater than it actually is. The collection and disposal of amalgam and other hazardous dental solid waste should be regulated as soon as possible and to decrease the costs of dental waste management the uncontaminated recyclable items, which contained approximately 33% of total dental waste should be recycled or reused if possible. © 2014 Nafez A.H. This is an open‑access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.