To think single-use PPE is terrible for the environment

[Lycidas]

Apparently 55,000 items of PPE will only last eight hours in the UK...with this situation due to continue for many months at least. Is there really no alternative that’s not as wasteful and environmentally damaging?

Producing it locally would be more efficient?

Surely the point of PPE is the sterility. Piercing needles can be sterilised but to encourage no infections, they use a sterile needle and open it in front of you at the time. I'd rather know that the person who is looking after people with an infectious virus with a high mortality rate is using new PPE rather than stuff that has been sterilised to some level that cannot be guaranteed

@Lycidas... Because high temp.water doesn't kill microbes and bacteria and virus. Its steralization that kills things and it doesn't start to 320 degrees farenheit

Seriously get some perspective 🙄

@BMW6 because just handwashing doesn't fully protect you.

Some PPE like the face shields can be recycled really easily. They are also able to be cleaned in a bath of IPA. The problem with cleaning is we can't even get the cleaning fluids right now. IPA is like gold dust. It does mean training and staff to do the cleaning too. The trusts just don't have the funds. For developing nations single use is the only way to go because cleaning is actually a bigger hurdle. They don't have enough cleaning fluid or clean storage etc.

So much hysteria on this thread. OP didn't say she wanted health care workers to die of covid rather than use disposable PPE.
It's a perfectly reasonable question.

The trouble is once you have worn it it is then contaminated. You have to remove it very carefully so as not to contaminate yourself in the process. If we wore washable gowns they would need to be treated as toxic waste and that would come at a high cost. The current gowns are a paper consistency with a plastic coating. So definately not washable!

We are reusing visors as they are in such short supply and can be cleaned with bleach.

I have a reusable respirator and it is incredibly uncomfortable. The disposables are much kinder but don't fit everyone. Again once worn they are contaminated and have a felt consistency so not washable.

I have always thought the amount of waste we produce is horrendous but this is not the time to be stressing over it. No way am I risking my life trying to reuse a single use item.

I love my job and would normally go above and beyond for my patients, but these are incredibly difficult times and I'm not risking my life or my family's.

You can get compostable nitrile gloves but they're not sterile and hardly the biggest concern in this crisis.

not rtft so sorry if repeated but people who haven't worked in healthcare and perhaps not realising the problem of contaminating one patient with what is picked up from another. I was in an isolation room in the past and staff had to put on PPE to enter the room and bin it on leaving because it was not known if what I had might infect other patients. Remember hospital/care home superbugs, the ones that kill lots of people who went in for one thing and end up very sick? That can happen from carrying infections from one person to the next if coverings are contaminated.

The general waste in the nhs is enormous anyway that PPE is the tip of the iceberg.
I’m a pharmacist and our 1 pharmacy alone produces 2 or 3 bin bags a day of waste plus the clinical waste we produce separately.
I try and recycle as much as I can at home to make up for the amount of waste we produce at work.

Levels of medical waste are awful. Another good reason to try to stay well.

There are reusable washable gowns, or there used to be, I'd need to check on masks and other kit. Only slight issue is that pretty much every hospital I can think of stopped laundering items for staff many years ago due to cost. Chickens home and roost come to mind. Nurses and others are now expected to suck up that cost by laundering uniforms etc at home. And when this is all over there'll be the usual drivel about lessons learned and hand wringing Daily Mail photo opportunities and as usual nothing fundamental will change.

You are generalizing OP, PPE is used by so many different groups it's different in every situation.

Now for example care services are terrifyingly short staffed , I mean insanely so. I know managers and carers who are pulling double and triple shifts , sleeping in break rooms, so exactly who do you think would wash these? Even if they currently existed and the processes to clean them at high temo.

Washing PPE in the way you describe would take far more man hours than you have any idea of (its patently patently clear you do not work in any form of industry with direct frontline with Covid at the moment)

Care services are desperate for PPE (I do mean desperate I helped a contact out on froday who had to find 1000 pieces just to get through next week as her service didn't have enough to make it through the weekend ) if there was a safe way currently to reuse , I guarantee you they would.

There isn't currently a safe option that isn't single use. As other PP have said this is the last thing on most of their minds right now.

I do think you've been jumped on but I sort of understand peoples frustration. It feels like a lazy musing from someone sitting in a lauded safe position. People ar just trying to survive right now , they dont need to be worried about the environment in that way. I suspect you meant well but haven't recognised other peoples situations.

So what
I'm pretty relaxed about the whole situation but even I would want a Dr, nurse in New PPE every time if possible,for my and their safety.

I'm also glad the places still doing takeaway coffee in Aus have said no reusable cups will be accepted, reusable bags are discouraged, butcher's not accepting own containers. It's the right thing to do currently.

I do think you've been jumped on but I sort of understand peoples frustration. It feels like a lazy musing from someone sitting in a lauded safe position

I disagree. Yes people are dying now, but they die from climate change too. The whole problem with this situation is the lack of balance in the approach taken to it, it's fine to wreck our kids' education and it's fine to give domestic abusers free rein because we need to protect the NHS (which means try to stop using it, and then wonder why they're not).

It's fine for people to point out reasons why reusable PPE is not an option. It's not fine for people to jump onto the OP with virtue signalling nonsense like "get a bit of perspective". Maybe the OP is the one with a bit of perspective, in fact.

stop people using it

The OP hasn't suggested she wants people reusing single use PPE, she hasn't suggested she wants more people to die.

She has asked if there could be a better option which doesn't involve tonnes of single use items.

It's a reasonable question.

I've been wondering about this.
Some items may well need to be single use.
It's possible some could be made to be washable.

If so, then the next time this kind of emergency arises, we won't be as dependent on hard to obtain supplies as we are now.

It's something to consider after this is over. It is important but no one in the NHS has headspace for changing protocols now, let alone precuring steriliisng equipment

I think the OP’s got a good point. It’s crossed my mind too. I noticed it last year when my husband was very ill in hospital with sepsis (which also illustrates why it’s needed) It’s something that needs to be worked on in the future. Obviously it’s needed as it is now.

Its a good point actually maybe someone stuck at home can invent something suitable

Mass cremations wouldn't be great for the environment either... We all and NHS should be moving to more sustainable ways of working but I don't think now's the time to pick this battle

For the OP

Gowns and masks could certainly be laundered and sterilised. This was the norm in previous times , before the decision was made to adopt " throwaway everything". So yes I agree with you.