Análise da taxa de geração de resíduos em um hospital universitário

Abstract

Health facilities must have a waste management plan to describe the actions related to the management of these wastes. After implementing this plan, one should evaluate its effectiveness and, for this, it is necessary to determine the rates of waste generation. Therefore, the aim of this research was to identify the medical waste generation rates (kg/ bed/day) for the waste groups A, B, D (including recyclables) and E in a hospital. Then, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was done to determine the seasonal interference in the generation of waste. The study was performed at a university hospital, located in the central region of Rio Grande Do Sul. Data collection took place during seven consecutive days for four weeks, with each week matching to a season. The waste generation rate presented the following values in kg/bed/day for each group: A: 0.831, B: 0.088, D: 2,607, D-Recyclable: 0.525 and E: 0.102. Finally, based on the analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was found that seasonality does not interfere with the generation of waste. It is concluded in this work that factors such as seasonality and number of hospital beds are not sufficient for comparison of waste generation rates between hospitals, as the results reported in the literature for hospitals with similar numbers of beds have divergent values.