What Are Solidifiers For Liquid Waste Spills And How Do They Improve Infection Control?
Liquid medical waste spills, like blood, vomit, and diarrhea, can contain harmful viruses and bacteria that can expose staff and patients to infection. Good infection control practices require these spills to be thoroughly cleaned, bagged, and safely disposed of as soon as they're noticed. One way that you can make cleaning liquid medical waste spills easier is to use a solidifier on it before you remove it from the surface. Continue reading to learn more about how solidifiers work and how they help improve infection control.
What Are Solidifiers and How Do They Work?
Solidifiers are infection control products that make it easier to dispose of potentially hazardous medical waste, like blood. When you pour the solidifier crystals on a liquid waste spill, they'll absorb the liquid and bind it together into a gel form. The process only takes a few minutes. Some solidifiers also contain chlorine, which allows them to deodorize foul-smelling waste like vomit or diarrhea.
How Does Using Solidifier on Liquid Waste Spills Improve Safety in the Workplace?
Using a solidifier on a hazardous waste spill makes it much quicker and easier to clean up. Since the solidifier binds all of the waste together, there's no risk of any being left behind on the floor after it's picked up. It's also much easier to handle solidified liquid waste when your staff needs to dispose of it. It can be easily scooped into a bag for biohazardous materials and disposed of in the appropriate container.
In addition to making liquid waste easier to clean up from surfaces, it also reduces the risk of spilling the liquid again after it's disposed of. When it's still in liquid form, waste can leak out of bags or canisters. This can potentially expose your staff to infection if the waste leaks out while it's being taken to the disposal site. When all of the waste is bound together in a gel, it's much less likely to leak out of its container.
Solidifiers can also be used for more than just infection control. They can also be used to make it easier to dispose of liquids that are hazardous when they're handled, like the medications that are used for chemotherapy. Some of these medications can cause burns if they make contact with bare skin, and solidifying them beforehand will make them safer and easier to handle.
If you're in a setting where liquid waste spills are common, like a clinic, hospital, or medical laboratory, solidifiers are a very useful infection control product to have in stock. Cleaning spills is quicker due to the fact that there's less scrubbing needed if you solidify the liquid before removing it from the surface, so staff can return to their duties quicker if they need to clean a spill. Solidified waste is also safer to handle, so you also reduce the risk that your staff will be exposed to potentially infectious medical waste.
