Management of hospital radioactive liquid waste: treatment proposal for radioimmunoassay wastes

i

This article has been updated. A Correction to this article was published on .

i

The Original Article was published on

i

The Original Article was published on

i

This article has been updated

i

This article was retracted on

i

This article has been updated

Abstract

Radioactive liquid wastes are produced at hospitals from diagnostic and therapeutic applications of radionuclides. The most usual management of these wastes is temporary storage at the hospital for radioactivity decay and, then, discharge into sewage if not other pollutants are present in waste, always after authorization of the corresponding institution. In some cases, radioactive wastes have other hazards, such as chemical or biological ones, which can be more dangerous than radiological hazard, and do not allow direct discharge into sewage in spite of decaying activity below the clearance level. Therefore, these wastes have to be treated and condition before discharge in spite of activity decay below discharge limit. This is the case of liquid wastes from radioimmunoassay (RIA), a laboratory technique that allows to determine human substances in very low concentrations (below 10⁻¹² g/mL), like hormones, using¹²⁵I as radionuclide. This study summarizes the usual management of radioactive liquid wastes from hospitals, including conventional and recent treatments applied. Furthermore, based on experimental results obtained with real RIA wastes, this work exposes a proposal of treatment with ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis membranes, and determines the most suitable application of this treatment according to radiological and operational considerations.

Keywords

radioactive waste / hospital / RIA / membranes / ultrafiltration / reverse osmosis

CHANGE HISTORY

A Correction to this paper has been published:
https://doi.org

The Retraction Note was updated to reflect reception of statements of disagreement from all authors.

This article has been retracted.Please see the Retraction Notice for more detail:
https://doi.org

References

[1] IAEA-TECDOC-1183 (2000) Management of radioactive waste from the use of radionuclides medicine. Austria: IAEA.

[2] Ravichandran R (2017) Management of Radioactive Wastes in a Hospital Environment, In: Modelling Trends in Solid and Hazardous Waste Management. Sengupta, Debashish, Agrahari, Sudha Editors, Singapore: 1-14.

[3] Publication 94 Ann ICRP (2004) Release of patients after therapy with unsealed radionuclides. International Commission on Radiological Protection. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/ANIB_34_2.

[4] Safe management of wastes from health-care activities (2014) Second edition, Edited by Yves Chartier, Jorge Emmanuel, Ute Pieper, Annette Prüss, Philip Rushbrook, Ruth Stringer, William Townend, Susan Wilburn and Raki Zghondi . World Health Organization. ISBN 978 92 4 154856 4.

[5] Uriarte Jaureguízar J (2020) Gestión de residuos en centros hospitalarios. Available from: https://docplayer.es/17297659-Gestion-de-residuos-en-centros-hospitalarios-dr-ing-julian-uriarte-jaureguizar.html

[6] Cesaro A, Belgiorno V (2017) Sustainability of medical waste management in different sized health care facilities. Waste Biomass Valor 8: 1819-1827.

[7] Shoukat K, Syed AT, Reyaz A, et al. (2010) Radioactive waste management in a hospital. Int J Health Sci 4: 39-46.

[8] IAEA-TECDOC-1714 (2013) Management of discharge of low level liquid radioactive waste generated in medical, educational, research and industrial facilities. Austria: IAEA.

[9] Hossain F (2020) Natural and anthropogenic radionuclides in water and wastewater: Sources, treatments and recoveries. J Environ Rad 225: 1-18.

[10] Carley-Macauly KW (1983) Options for the treatment of low and intermediate level active liquid wastes. IAEA Radioactive Waste Management Intl Conference 2: 15-35.

[11] Koster R, Kraemer R (1989) Treatment and conditioning of liquid low and intermediate level wastes. Management of Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Wastes Conference 2: 3-20.

[12] Bradbury D (1989) Helping to reduce effluent generation. Nucl Eng Int 34: 44-46.

[13] Zhang X, Gu P, Liu Y (2019) Decontamination of radioactive wastewater: State of the art and challenges forward. Chemosphere 215: 543-553.

[14] Pabby AK, Swain B, Sonar NL, et al. (2021) Radioactive waste processing using membranes: state of the art technology, challenges and perspectives. Sep Purif Rev 1-23.

[15] Mushtaq S, Yun SJ, Yang JE, et al. (2017) Efficient and selective removal of radioactive iodine anions using engineered nanocomposite membranes. Environ Sci Nano 4: 2157-2163.

[16] Krawczyk E, Piñero-García F, Ferro-García MA (2013) Discharges of nuclear medicine radioisotopes in Spanish hospitals. J Environ Rad 116: 93-98.

[17] Montaña M, Camacho A, Devesa R, et al. (2013) The presence of radionuclides in wastewater treatment plants in Spain and their effect on human health. J Clean Prod 60: 77-82.

[18] Avila R, de la Cruz I, Sundell-Bergman S, et al. (2007) Radiological consequences of radionuclide releases to sewage systems from hospitals in Sweden. SSI Rapport. Stockholm: Swedish Radiation Protection Authority.

[19] Martínez A, Peñalver T, Baciua M, et al. (2018) Presence of artificial radionuclides in samples from potable water and wastewater treatment plants. J Environ Rad 192: 187-193.

[20] Mulas D, Camacho A, Garbayo A, et al. (2019) Medically-derived radionuclides levels in seven heterogeneous urban wastewater treatment plants: The role of operating conditions and catchment area. Sci Total Environ 663: 818-829.

[21] Ruibal Morell A (2020) Remembering our history: 60 years ago radioimmunoanalysis was discovered. Rev Esp Med Nucl Imagen Mol 39: 337-339.

[22] Lecama-Carrasco J (1997) Radiofarmacia y radioinmunoanálisis. Educación Química 8: 17-21.

[23] Sancho M (2002) Tratamiento de residuos líquidos hospitalarios procedentes de RIA (radioinmunoanálisis) mediante técnicas de membrana. Doctoral Thesis, Universitat Politècnica de València.

[24] Peyrin JO (1992) La gestion des déchets radioactifs hospitaliers. Radioprotection 27: 47-53.

[25] Shapilov VV, Gorsky GG, Zvonova IA (2016) Can we consider wastes generated during radioimmunoassays as a radioactive waste? Radiacionnaâ Gigiena 3: 67-69.

[26] Efremenkov VM (1999) Management of radioactive waste from medical application of radioisotopes. Radioactive Waste Manage Environ Remediation Conference : 3-8.

[27] Rau EH, Alaimo RJ, Ashbrook PC, et al. (2000) Minimization and management of wastes from biomedical research. Environ Health Perspect 108: 953-977.

[28] Hakimi SS, Nik M (1995) Removal of iodine-125 from effluents by chemical and soil column methods. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 196: 77-87.

[29] Hakimi SS (1996) Improved iodine-125 removal in anionic form of iodate by column method using laterite soil. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 214: 117-131.

[30] Edwards BE, Couch NW, Myers KD et al. (1996) ¹²⁵I aqueous waste volume reduction at a pharmaceutical research laboratory . Health Phys 71: 379-83.

[31] Inoue H, Kagoshima M (2000) Removal of 125I radioactive experimental waste with an anion exchange paper membrane. Appl Radiat Isot 52: 1407-1412.

[32] Lee S, Kim Y, Park J, et al. (2018) Treatment of medical radioactive liquid waste using Forward Osmosis (FO) membrane process. J Membr Sci 556: 238-247.

[33] Lee BK, Ellenbeckerb MJ, Moure-Ersaso R (2004) Alternatives for treatment and disposal cost reduction of regulated medical waste. Waste Manag 24: 143-151.

[34] Chmielewski AG, Harasimowicz M (1992) Influence of gamma and electron irradiation on transport properties of ultrafiltration membranes. Nukleonika 37: 61-70.

[35] Chmielewski AG, Harasimowicz M, Zakrzewska-Trznadel G (1999) Membrane technologies for liquid radioactive waste treatment. Czech J Phys 49: 979-985.

[36] Hagen K (1998) Removal of particles, bacteria and parasites with ultrafiltration for drinking water treatment. Desalination 119: 85-92.

[37] Petrucci C, Traino AC (2015) Focus on the legislative approach to short half life radioactive hospital waste releasing. Phys Medica 31: 726-732.

[38] Sen Gupta SK, Slade JA, Tulk WS (1995) Integrated plant for treatment of liquid radwaste. Ind Water Treat 27: 33-41.

[39] Chmielewski AG, Harasimowicz M, Tyminski B, Zakrzewska-Trznadel G (2001) Concentration of low level and medium level radioactive wastes with 3-stage reverse osmosis pilot plant. Sep Sci Technol 36: 1117-1127.

[40] Abdel Rahman RO, Ibrahium HA, Hung YT (2011) Liquid radioactive wastes treatment: A review. Water 3: 551-565.

[41] Chmielewski AG, Harasimowicz M (1997) Influence of gamma and electron irradiation on transport properties of nanofiltration and hyperfiltration membranes. Nukleonika 42: 857-862.

[42] Arnal JM, Sancho M, Verdú G, et al. (2003) Treatment of¹³⁷Cs liquid wastes by reverse osmosis. Part I. Preliminary tests. Desalination 154: 27-33.

[43] Sancho M, Arnal JM, García-Fayos B (2013) Treatment of hospital radioactive liquid wastes from RIA (radioimmunoassay) by membrane technology. Desalination 321: 110-118.

[44] Jayko ME, Weeks BM, Garrison WM (1960) Mechanism in the radiolysis of aqueous protein solutions. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Available from: https://escholarship.org/content/qt8rp6033g/qt8rp6033g.pdf.

[45] Houée-Levina C, Bobrowskib K (2013) The use of the methods of radiolysis to explore the mechanisms of free radical modifications in proteins. J Proteomics 92: 51-62.