Review on medical waste management in China and Nigeria.

Medical waste management is an essential component of healthcare delivery globally due to the toxic and contagious potentials on human health and the environment. There are resource limitations in developing nations when it comes to the appropriate handling of medical wastes. In this article, we examined previous studies to evaluate the practices of medical waste management in China and Nigeria. Contextually, this work addresses medical waste practices in the context of waste generation, segregation, collection, storage, transportation, treatment and disposal. In addition to reviewing additional important aspects of medical waste management, the current study addresses potentials and challenges for efficient medical waste management in both countries. For this study; Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, PubMed, Agencies, Conferences, National and International Conventions were searched from 1998 up to 2023 for all studies reporting medical waste management in China and Nigeria. To further guarantee that only resource materials with similar research interests in medical waste management were selected, a double screening process was employed. The challenges of medical waste management in both countries are limited financing, inadequate training, ineffective legislation, ineffective medical waste transport system and insufficient treatment technology. Furthermore, this study offers practical recommendations by identifying the particular areas that require attention and development, such as training of healthcare workers, adequate financing of medical waste management projects, including research and development on efficient toxic emission reducing technologies, and partnership with other relevant authorities and stakeholders to ensure enforcement of national and local legislation.

Heavy metal pollution near an abandoned mercury-bearing waste recovery enterprise in southwestern China: Spatial distribution and its sources in soil and plants.

The contribution of smelting of nonferrous metals to heavy metals in surface soil have become increasingly important over the past decade. In this study, the distribution of heavy metals around an abandoned mercury-bearing waste recovery enterprise were investigated. Soil (14) and plant (18) samples were collected in the surrounding area. The total concentration of heavy metals and methyl mercury content were measured by ICP-MS and HPLC-ICP-MS. The results show that the average contents of Cd, Cr, Pb, Hg and As in all soil samples are higher than the second-level values of Soil environmental quality-Risk control standard for soil contamination of development land (GB 36600-2018). Hg in the leaves ranged from 0.003 to 0.174 mg kg-1. Besides, the Pearson correlation analysis results indicate that Hg has a different environmental behavior compared to the other heavy metal under certain environmental or geographical conditions. But the mantel test statistical analysis results show that the Cr (P < 0.01), Cu, Pb, and Fe (P < 0.05) in the soil may have similar pollution sources with carbonate-bound mercury and iron-manganese oxide-bound mercury. The Hg concentrations show no correlation among plant leaves and soil, but significantly influenced by the distance and wind direction. These findings suggest that Hg in plant leaves may be derived from the deposition of atmospheric mercury from secondary mercury plant. The results will supplement those for relevant policy making for mercury-bearing waste recovery enterprises to improve urban environmental quality and human health.