Análise do ciclo de vida dos resíduos de saúde em hospital universitário: interface com a pandemia da COVID-19.

Abstract

Every year 1.4 billion tons of solid waste are produced in the world. At the Brazil, separating only waste from health services (RSS), approximately, 28% of Brazilian cities carry out inadequate disposal. Consequently, the increase in RSS has brought significant impacts on the environment and health public. The present study used as a RSS management tool the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) in a large hospital located in the city of Campina Grande-PB in the period from 2017 to 2020, before and during the pandemic of COVID-19. The research also shows the environmental impacts generated by RSS in the hospital and sectors through flowcharts, from generation to final disposal. The Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) was created in the period from 2017 to 2020. However, the LCA served as a methodological basis for the literature review, in addition to the use of Open LCA software and CML -IA 2001 impact classification method by categories. The survey also analyzed the hospital management process Universitário Alcides Carneiro (HUAC) and the destination of these RSS to the landfill sanitation, special treatment and recycling. The environmental impacts produced were: aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicity, human toxicity; eutrophication; acidification; photochemical oxidation; destruction of the ozone layer; heating global; abiotic depletion. In annual comparisons, only for acidification there was an increase of 228.6% in 2017; 150.5% in 2018; 192.42% in 2019 and 184.5% in 2020 of pollutant emission. Regarding eutrophication, the special treatment was more unfavorable in 2019 with 771.97 kg of emission. In all scenarios, recycling was the most favorable process in mitigating impacts to the environment environment. In 2018 alone, there was an increase of 44.6% compared to 2017 in the production of RSS. Compared to the year of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), the periods of 2018 and 2019 were of exacerbated waste generation and consequently greater environmental impacts such as warming potential or climate change, various types of ecotoxicity and human toxicity. In this way, it is concluded that LCA is an essential tool in measuring environmental performance of RSS.