Medical waste is produced within a number of industries, even those that are least expected, including airports, tattoo parlors and even barbershops.
Aside from medical counterparts, hazardous waste is produced by facilities from the least expected places. Whether it’s airports or tattoo parlors, the less-common industries are still held to the same standards and regulations as all producers of medical waste.
Barbershops are a place to get cleaned up and feel good, but even barbershops have an interesting history that goes far beyond hair cutting and a clean shave.
In the latter part of the 19th century, barbers helped people with common medical procedures, such as lancing boils, setting breaks, and even teeth pulling.
In the middle ages, barbers practiced bloodletting. Using a narrow blade, the barber would open a vein and allow the blood to pour down into a small brass bow. In fact, the iconic barbershop pole comes from this very procedure; the red representing blood and white representing the bandages used to stem the bleeding.
While modern day patients no longer turn to their barbers for medical procedures, barbers are still producers of waste that could be considered hazardous; scissors that come into contact with hair and skin, razors that shave the skin, and combs that brush through the hair of several clients a day.
These types of instruments aren’t waste, per se, rather instruments that are required to be disinfected and cleaned because of their purpose. Barbers should take good care to keep instruments sterile to prevent the spread of infection from customer to customer, and for the sake of their own health. This involves sterilizing and cleaning their tools to kill all forms of microbial life using an autoclave or dry heat sterilizer.
People have a right to know the instruments cosmetologists and barbers are using are clean and sanitary, and MedXwaste can help barbershops keep their instruments sanitized while keeping costs low.
Contact MedXwaste to learn more about the autoclaving process and why it’s a necessary step in keeping the barbershop clean and infection-free. We offer barbershop medical waste disposal services and more!
Service Areas: Long Island Medical Waste; New York City Medical Waste; Westchester Medical Waste and more!