The record
Documents cited on this site
Every primary document this publication has retrieved and read, with its citation, its issuing body and the date we retrieved it.
The Operative Sentence is an independent reference publication. It is not affiliated with BioDrain Medical, Inc., Axe Compute Inc., DeRoyal Industries, Inc. or any manufacturer, and it sells, services and recommends nothing. This page describes what published regulations, guidelines and studies say. It is not legal advice, not clinical advice, and not a substitute for your facility’s exposure control plan, your state’s rules or your sewer authority’s ordinance. Nobody who writes these pages has worked in an operating room. This publication is not a standards body and nothing here is a standard, a guideline or a government publication.
This index exists so that you can leave. Every page here rests on documents that are, with a handful of stated exceptions, public and free to read, and if you trust the documents more than you trust us then the documents are what we owe you. A page that cites a document links to its entry below; an entry links to the document wherever our retrieval log recorded the address.
Entries are added when a document is retrieved and read, not when an article citing it ships. Some documents below are not cited by any published page: they were read, and what they contained did not end up carrying an argument. They stay listed, because a reading list that only shows the documents that turned out to be useful is a different and less honest thing. Nothing is listed here that has not been opened.
Retrieved is the date a human here last opened the document and read the text being relied on. It is not a date on which a script confirmed that a server returned a status code.
Read it is the address we followed. Where it says URL not recorded, the document was opened and read on the retrieval date but our log kept the publisher and the date and not the address, so the entry names the publisher instead. We do not print a URL we did not ourselves follow, and we do not reconstruct a plausible one after the fact. Those entries will gain an address at the next review.
Federal regulations and statutes
| Document | Issuing body | Version read | Retrieved | Read it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bloodborne pathogens 29 CFR § 1910.1030 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Retention and updating of injury and illness records 29 CFR § 1904.33 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Formaldehyde 29 CFR § 1910.1048 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Personal protective equipment, general requirements 29 CFR § 1910.132 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Respiratory protection 29 CFR § 1910.134 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Air contaminants 29 CFR § 1910.1000 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Regulated medical waste 49 CFR § 173.197 |
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, US Department of Transportation | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Class 6.2 — definitions and exceptions 49 CFR § 173.134 |
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, US Department of Transportation | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Applicability of the Hazardous Materials Regulations to persons and functions 49 CFR § 171.1 — the section that limits the HMR to transportation in commerce |
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, US Department of Transportation | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Exclusions from the definition of solid waste 40 CFR § 261.4 — the domestic sewage exclusion is at (a)(1)(ii) |
Environmental Protection Agency | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| National pretreatment standards: prohibited discharges 40 CFR § 403.5 |
Environmental Protection Agency | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Prohibition on sewering hazardous waste pharmaceuticals 40 CFR § 266.505 — subpart P, added at 84 FR 5816 and effective 21 August 2019; amended 2023. Not to be confused with subpart N (§§ 266.210–266.360), the conditional exemption for low-level mixed waste, which is a different subject. |
Environmental Protection Agency | eCFR current text | 2026‑08‑06 | ecfr.gov |
| Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act Pub. L. No. 106-430 — SEC. 3 directs the revision of 29 CFR 1910.1030; SEC. 5(a) exempts it from notice-and-comment rulemaking |
106th Congress | Enrolled text, approved 2000-11-06 | 2026‑08‑06 | govinfo.gov |
Compiled by hand from the documents themselves. Codified rules are read as the eCFR serves them on the retrieval date shown. The eCFR is a continuously updated compilation rather than a fixed edition, which is why each section is cited by its number and its retrieval date rather than by a permalink to a snapshot.
Agency guidance, letters of interpretation and enforcement documents
A letter of interpretation is not a regulation. It is an agency’s written answer to a question somebody asked, it binds nobody, and each letter says so in its own opening. It is indexed here because these letters are quoted constantly, usually without their dates and almost never with the question that produced them.
| Document | Issuing body | Document date | Retrieved | Read it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use of engineering and work practice controls during pouring of blood or OPIM Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030(d)(2)(i), (c)(1)(iv) and (d)(4)(iii). OSHA’s own address for this letter reads 2001-02-09. That is the address, not the date. The letter is dated 20 July 2000 and should be cited by that date. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2000-07-20 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| OSHA does not endorse commercial products Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 1993-09-27 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Evaluation of raw sewage as regulated waste; product label compliance with the bloodborne pathogens standard Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030 and (g)(1)(i). This is where the agency’s standing sentence about products appears: The agency does not, however, approve or endorse products or labels as you have requested. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 1995-08-28 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| The use of safety-engineered devices and work practice controls in operating rooms; hospital responsibility to protect independent practitioners under the bloodborne pathogens standard Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030 and (c)(1)(iv) |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2007-01-18 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Disposal of blood and other potentially infectious materials (OPIM) Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030, (d)(4)(iii)(B)(1)(iii) and (d)(4)(iii)(C) |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2009-06-02 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Requirements for the construction of trash receptacles used in operating rooms for the containerization of regulated waste Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030, (d)(4)(iii)(B)(1), (d)(4)(iii)(B)(2) and (g)(1)(i). Carries the agency’s product statement in its general form: Additionally, please remember that OSHA does not approve or endorse the use of any specific products and/or their manufacturers and suppliers. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2007-08-09 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| OSHA does not regulate the final disposal of medical waste Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030, (d)(4)(iii)(A) and (d)(4)(iii)(C). The title is the agency’s own sentence. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2007-10-26 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| OSHA policy on the containerization and disposal of specimen containers used for urine collection in medical settings Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030 and (d)(4)(iii) |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2011-04-08 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Hazards of Smoke Generated from Surgical Procedures Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.1030 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 1996-04-18 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| OSHA requirements for smoke plume generated from laser and electrosurgical instruments in dental offices and hospital operating rooms Letter of interpretation, cited to 1910.132, 1910.134, 1910.1000 and section 5(a)(1) of the OSH Act |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2016-10-07 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Enforcement Procedures for the Occupational Exposure to Bloodborne Pathogens Directive CPL 02-02-069, the compliance directive that replaced CPL 2-2.44D |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 2001-11-27 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov (PDF) |
| Laser/Electrosurgery Plume Safety and health topic page. Carries the agency’s own statement that it has no specific standard for plume hazards. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | Undated web page | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Bloodborne Pathogens — Enforcement The agency’s ranked list of the sections of 1910.1030 most frequently the subject of citations, described on the page as Citations are from October 2013 - August 2025 in order of frequency. Federal OSHA data; State Plan citations are not in it. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | Undated web page; data range stated as 2013-10 to 2025-08 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| OSHA Penalties Maximum penalty amounts applicable to violations assessed after 15 January 2026, attributed on the page to an OSHA memorandum of 21 May 2026 |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | Page cites an OSHA memo of 2026-05-21 | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| State Plans Agency page carrying the count of OSHA-approved state programmes: There are currently 22 State Plans covering both private sector and state and local government workers, and seven State Plans covering only state and local government workers. |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | Undated web page | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Hospitals eTool Compliance-assistance material, not a standard |
Occupational Safety and Health Administration | Undated web resource | 2026‑08‑06 | osha.gov |
| Medical Waste The agency page recording that its medical-waste authority ended when the Medical Waste Tracking Act expired on 21 June 1991, and pointing at the states |
Environmental Protection Agency | Page updated 2026-04-20 | 2026‑08‑06 | epa.gov |
| EPA Model Pretreatment Ordinance EPA 833-B-06-002. The optional model from which a good deal of municipal sewer-use language descends. |
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Wastewater Management | January 2007 | 2026‑08‑06 | URL not recorded — published by EPA, Office of Wastewater Management |
| Guidelines for Environmental Infection Control in Health-Care Facilities Recommendations of CDC and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee |
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HICPAC | 2003, updated July 2019 | 2026‑08‑06 | URL not recorded — published by CDC and HICPAC |
| Control of Smoke from Laser/Electric Surgical Procedures Hazard Controls HC11, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 96-128 |
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | 1996 | 2026‑08‑06 | cdc.gov |
| Health-care waste Fact sheet. Its widely quoted share figure is about all waste from health-care activities, worldwide, and the fact sheet cites no source for it. |
World Health Organization | Updated 2024-10-24 | 2026‑08‑06 | who.int |
| The National Surveillance System for Healthcare Workers (NaSH): Summary Report for Blood and Body Fluid Exposure Data Collected from Participating Healthcare Facilities (June 1995 through December 2007) The system is discontinued. The report states in its own Limitations section that the absence of denominator data prevents reliable estimates of risk and that the variable number of reporting hospitals prevents meaningful trend analysis. cdc.gov returned HTTP 403 to our client; the text was read from the Internet Archive capture dated 2026-07-26. |
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | 2011-06 | 2026‑08‑06 | cdc.gov (PDF) · archived |
| NHSN Newsletter, Volume 20, Issue 2 Page 8 announces the retirement of the Healthcare Personnel Exposure Modules in June 2025 for low participation. cdc.gov returned HTTP 403 to our client; the text was read from the Internet Archive capture dated 2026-07-25. |
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | 2025-06 | 2026‑08‑06 | cdc.gov (PDF) · archived |
| Data Brief: Sharps Injuries among Hospital Workers in Massachusetts: Findings from the Massachusetts Sharps Injury Surveillance System, 2021 & 2022 Reporting is a licence condition under MGL c. 111 s 53D, so this is a count across DPH-licensed hospitals rather than a convenience sample. It counts sharps injuries only. mass.gov returned HTTP 403 to our client; the text was read from the Internet Archive capture dated 2025-11-14. |
Massachusetts Department of Public Health | 2025-07 | 2026‑08‑06 | mass.gov (PDF) · archived |
Compiled by hand from the documents themselves. Each letter of interpretation was read in full at the address shown, including the date line and the addressee, because both are routinely dropped when these letters are quoted.
State medical-waste rules
These are the state rules quoted in Register A. A state is listed here only where we retrieved its own administrative code or statute; a state we have not read appears in the register as a row marked Not checked and does not appear here at all.
| Document | Issuing body | Version read | Retrieved | Read it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California — treatment of medical waste Cal. Health & Safety Code § 118215. Subsection (b) is an express carve-out from (a)’s treat-before-disposal command and reaches fluid blood and fluid blood products only. The word “sewer” is not in it, which is why a keyword search of the California code finds nothing; the statute’s term throughout ispublic sewage system |
California Legislature, published by California Legislative Information | As amended by Stats. 2014, Ch. 564, § 70 (AB 333), effective 2015-01-01 | 2026‑08‑06 | leginfo.legislature.ca.gov |
| Ohio — infectious waste generators, general obligations OAC 3745-570-100. Subsection (E) is the discharge permission. Chapter index enumerated in full; it is the only discharge provision in the chapter. |
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, published by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission | Effective 2025-04-06 | 2026‑08‑06 | codes.ohio.gov |
| Ohio — infectious waste, superseded rule OAC 3745-27-30(C)(3)Superseded: renumbered to OAC 3745-570-100 effective 2025-04-06, and the text changed — the current rule requires the waste consist exclusively of blood, blood products, body fluids and excreta. The live address now returns no rule. The text we read came from a Wayback capture dated 2025-02-09. Do not cite 3745-27-30 as current. link rot — archived copy |
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency | Effective 2013-03-01 | 2026‑08‑06 | Archived copy |
| North Carolina — medical waste management 15A NCAC 13B .1202. Subsection (i) carries the 20 millilitre threshold that runs backwards from most people’s intuition. |
North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, posting the readopted rule | Readopted effective 2019-11-01 | 2026‑08‑06 | ncdhhs.gov (PDF) |
| Virginia — identification of regulated medical waste 9VAC20-121-90. Subsection (D)(8) names discarded empty suction canisters and tubing among the items that are not regulated medical waste, subject to a condition that lifts the exemption where the item is covered by 29 CFR 1910.1030 or a comparable standard. Subsection (B)(2)(b) runs the other way for the solidifier route:Human blood and body fluids solidified by absorbent gel, powder, or similar means are also regulated medical waste |
Virginia Waste Management Board, published by the Virginia Law Portal | Page stamped 8/6/2026 | 2026‑08‑06 | law.lis.virginia.gov |
| Rhode Island — regulated medical waste 250-RICR-140-15-1, Regulations Governing the Generation, Transportation, Storage, Treatment, Management and Disposal of Regulated Medical Waste in Rhode Island. The discharge provision is at § 1.15(F)(3)(a), and it is the only volumetric cap on a septic system we located in any state. |
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, published by the RI Secretary of State | Active rule as published in the RICR | 2026‑08‑06 | URL not recorded — published by the Rhode Island Secretary of State in the RICR |
| Massachusetts — medical or biological waste 105 CMR 480.000, Minimum requirements for the management of medical or biological waste (State Sanitary Code Chapter VIII). The provision on free-draining blood is at 480.200(A)(1). |
Massachusetts Department of Public Health | As published by the Commonwealth | 2026‑08‑06 | URL not recorded — published by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health |
| Texas — special waste from health care-related facilities 25 TAC §§ 1.131–1.137; the disposal methods are at § 1.136 and the definitions, including “bulk” at 100 mL or more, at § 1.132. Text as published by the Texas Secretary of State and captured 2024-07-13; last recorded amendment 2018-05-24, 43 TexReg 3242. Texas retired its machine-readable Administrative Code viewer in 2025 and the replacement portal does not serve retrievable text, so we have not read this rule as it stands today. link rot — archived copy |
Texas Department of State Health Services, published by the Texas Secretary of State | As last amended 2018-05-24 | 2026‑08‑06 | Archived copy carrying the source note |
| Texas — Laws and Rules, Public Health Sanitation Program The agency page that still lists 25 TAC §§ 1.131–1.137 as governing law. Indexed because it is the evidence that the subchapter has not been repealed, which the retired code viewer can no longer show. |
Texas Department of State Health Services | Page as served on the retrieval date | 2026‑08‑06 | dshs.texas.gov |
| Texas — TCEQ publication RG-001 Guidance, not a rule. It quotes the 100 mL “bulk” definition to 25 TAC 1.132(7) and twice points at 25 TAC 1.136, which is how we corroborated the definitions in a second official document. |
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality | Revised August 2016 | 2026‑08‑06 | tceq.texas.gov (PDF) |
| Florida — biomedical waste Rule 64E-16.007, F.A.C. Subsection (5) authorises discharge in terms that subsection (1) appears to forbid, and the two never cross-reference each other. Chapter 64E-16 entered rule development on 2026-04-01, so this citation may move. |
Florida Department of Health, published by the Florida Department of State | As published in the Florida Administrative Code | 2026‑08‑06 | URL not recorded — published in the Florida Administrative Code by the Florida Department of State |
Compiled by hand from each state’s own official publisher, not from a commercial code aggregator or a secondary summary. Where the official channel was dead or unreadable, the row says so and names the capture we read instead. Register A quotes the operative text of each of these rules with its own retrieval date.
Peer-reviewed and institutional literature
| Document | Published in | Document date | Retrieved | Read it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hsu 2020 Hsu S, Thiel CL, Mello MJ, Slutzman JE. Dumpster diving in the emergency department. |
West J Emerg Med. 2020;21(5):1211–17 | 2020 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC7514403 |
| Sharma 2024 Sharma DK, Murase LC, Rosenbach M, Barbieri JS, Murase JE. Regulated medical waste reduction in the dermatology clinic. |
Dermatol Ther (Heidelb). 2024;14(11):3175–81 | 2024 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC11557808 |
| Runcie 2018 Runcie H. Sort your waste! An audit on the use of clinical waste bins and its implications. |
Future Healthc J. 2018;5(3):203–6 | 2018 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC6502600 |
| Corbin 2022 Corbin L, Hoff H, Smith A, Owens C. A 24-hour waste audit of the neuro ICU during the COVID-19 pandemic and opportunities for diversion. |
J Clim Chang Health. 2022 | 2022 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 36439332 |
| Kagoma 2012 Kagoma YK, Stall N, Rubinstein E, Naudie D. People, planet and profits: the case for greening operating rooms. |
CMAJ. 2012;184(17):1905–11 | 2012 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 22664760 |
| Tieszen & Gruenberg 1992 Tieszen ME, Gruenberg JC. A quantitative, qualitative, and critical assessment of surgical waste. Surgeons venture through the trash can. |
JAMA. 1992;267(20):2765–8 | 1992 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 1578596 |
| Goldberg 1996 Goldberg ME, Vekeman D, Torjman MC, Seltzer JL, Kynes T. Medical waste in the environment: do anesthesia personnel have a role to play? |
J Clin Anesth. 1996;8(6):475–9 | 1996 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 8872687 |
| Balch 2023 Balch JA, Krebs JR, Filiberto AC, Montgomery WG, Berkow LC, Upchurch GR Jr. Methods and evaluation metrics for reducing material waste in the operating room: a scoping review. |
Surgery. 2023;174(2):252–8 | 2023 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 37277308 |
| Slutzman 2023 Slutzman JE, Bockius H, Gordon IO, Greene HC, Hsu S, Huang Y, et al. Waste audits in healthcare: a systematic review and description of best practices. |
Waste Manag Res. 2023;41(1):3–17 | 2023 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 35652693 |
| Childers 2018 Childers CP, Maggard-Gibbons M. Understanding costs of care in the operating room. The only direct benchmark for the price of an operating-room minute we located. Its limitations paragraph records that Kaiser hospitals are excluded by exemption, and its discussion warns against pricing device savings on OR time alone. |
JAMA Surg. 2018;153(4):e176233 | 2018 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC5875376 |
| Glasgow 2004 Glasgow RE, Adamson KA, Mulvihill SJ. The benefits of a dedicated minimally invasive surgery program to academic general surgery practice. Endnote 8 of the 2011 Greening the OR fluid-management module, and the module’s stated source for $17 a minute. Abstract only; the full text is paywalled and we did not read it, so we neither confirm nor deny that the figure is in it. |
J Gastrointest Surg. 2004;8(7):869–73 | 2004 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 15531241 |
| Mathias 2004 Mathias JM. Safe options for suction canister waste. Endnote 9 of the 2011 Greening the OR fluid-management module, cited there for a disposal price the article does not contain. Read in full as the four-page PDF. The address printed in the module, at orbusmgt.com, no longer resolves; this is the same PDF on the publisher’s successor host. |
OR Manager. 2004;20(4):1–4 | April 2004 | 2026‑08‑06 | periopleader.com (PDF) |
| Baker 2023 Baker S, Clark J, Pla AB, Feixas EV, Huegel J, Tariq L. A non-randomised prospective service evaluation comparing an enclosed fluid-management system against suction canisters across three European hospital sites. Manufacturer-funded; two authors are employees of the funder. The title is not printed here because it names a fluid-management system, which this publication does not print. |
Ann Med Surg. 2023;85(9):4307–14 | 2023 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC10473330 |
| Droog 2025 Droog L, van der Sijp J, Hoppe T, et al. A life-cycle assessment comparing an enclosed fluid-management system against canister drainage in one Dutch hospital, across seventeen impact categories and three aggregated endpoints. Manufacturer-supported: equipment and funding supplied by the manufacturer of one compared system. It conducted no life-cycle costing. The title is not printed here because it names a fluid-management system. |
Sci Rep. 2025;15:36587 | 2025 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC12540994 |
| Practice Greenhealth sustainability benchmark reports Collection years CY2020 through CY2024, read as the published PDFs. Each figure taken from them is used with its collection year and the self-selected award-applicant cohort caveat attached. The report PDFs served normally on 2026-08-06 even where the organisation’s HTML pages returned 403. |
Practice Greenhealth | CY2020–CY2024 | 2026‑08‑06 | CY2022 report (PDF) |
| Practice Greenhealth, fluid management systems topic page The source of the “average of $51,000 per year” figure, which the page carries without a citation. server refused — archived copy The live page returned 403 on 2026-08-06; read from archived captures dated 2025-08-03 and 2023-03-27, in which the sentence is identical. |
Practice Greenhealth | Captures 2023-03-27 and 2025-08-03 | 2026‑08‑06 | web.archive.org |
| Practice Greenhealth, Greening the OR module Read for its footnotes, which is where several of the most-repeated figures in this field terminate. |
Practice Greenhealth | 2011 | 2026‑08‑06 | No stable public address recorded; the publisher’s site refuses non-browser requests |
| Endo 2007 Endo S, Kanemitsu K, Ishii H, et al. Risk of facial splashes in four major surgical specialties in a multicentre study. Abstract read at PubMed; full text not obtained. The abstract does not name the country of the six facilities; the authors write from Tohoku University, Japan. |
J Hosp Infect. 2007;67(1):56–61 | 2007 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 17669549 |
| Davies 2007 Davies CG, Khan MN, Ghauri AS, Ranaboldo CJ. Blood and body fluid splashes during surgery — the need for eye protection and masks. Full text read at PubMed Central. The single participant is described in Methods as a specialist registrar, year 2, recorded as surgeon or assistant. |
Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2007;89(8):770–2 | 2007 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMC2173168 |
| Stacey 2015 Stacey AW, Czyz CN, Kondapalli SS, et al. Risk of ocular blood splatter during oculofacial plastic surgery. Abstract read at PubMed; full text not obtained. The abstract says “three separate locations” and does not name them; the four author affiliations span Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. |
Ophthalmic Plast Reconstr Surg. 2015;31(3):182–6 | 2015 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 25126769 |
| Lakhani 2015 Lakhani R, Loh Y, Zhang TT, Kothari P. A prospective study of blood splatter in ENT. Abstract read at PubMed; full text not obtained. The abstract reports a median of 4.7 and an average of 8.2 splash marks per mask, which we could not reconcile without the paper and have not used. |
Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2015;272(7):1809–12 | 2015 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 25617968 |
| De Silva 2009 De Silva R, Mall A, Panieri E, Stupart D, Kahn D. Risk of blood splashes to the eye during surgery. Abstract read at PubMed; full text not obtained. The 45% splash incidence is among participants only: 59% of surgeons and assistants declined to wear the visor. |
S Afr J Surg. 2009;47(1):7–9 | 2009 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 19405330 |
| Panlilio 2004 Panlilio AL, Orelien JG, Srivastava PU, Jagger J, Cohn RD, Cardo DM. Estimate of the annual number of percutaneous injuries among hospital-based healthcare workers in the United States, 1997–1998. Abstract read at PubMed; full text not obtained. This is the document behind the circulating “385,000 a year”: 384,325, 95% CI 311,091–463,922, from 1997–98 data, published in 2004, and therefore predating the revision to 1910.1030 that took effect in 2001. |
Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2004;25(7):556–62 | 2004 | 2026‑08‑06 | PMID 15301027 |
| EPINet US summary reports Annual needlestick-and-sharp-object-injury and blood-and-body-fluid-exposure summaries. We read the 2022 and 2024 US reports in both strands; the series also publishes a 2023 report. EPINet is a convenience sample of self-selected facilities with no sampling frame and an average-daily-census denominator, the contributing facilities change from year to year, and no year-over-year difference in these reports should be read as a trend. The PDFs carry an International Safety Center copyright line; aoec.org hosts and distributes them. The International Safety Center’s former domain no longer serves the report series and must not be cited; retrieve these reports from aoec.org. |
International Safety Center, hosted at aoec.org | 2022 and 2024 reporting years | 2026‑08‑06 | aoec.org/epinet/ |
Compiled by hand. Every Practice Greenhealth figure used on this site carries its collection year and the caveat that the underlying sample is Environmental Excellence Award applicants — a self-selected group of high performers, not a census of US hospitals — and figures from different collection years are never combined into one series.
Documents at the end of a chain that we could not obtain
These are listed because a reader tracing a figure will arrive at them, and a dead end is easier to bear when somebody tells you in advance that it is one. None of them is quoted anywhere on this site. Their presence here is a statement about the record, not about whether the figures they are supposed to support are right.
| Document | Where it is cited | What happened when we looked | Last attempted |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Air Force IERA, Medical Waste Incinerator Waste Management Plan — Malcolm Grow Medical Center, Building 1056, Andrews Air Force Base, MD | Footnote 2 of the 2011 Practice Greenhealth Greening the OR module | The address printed in that module no longer resolves and we located no other copy. A single military hospital, reported in 2001. | 2026‑08‑06 |
| Practice Greenhealth, Sustainability Benchmarking Report, 2010 | Footnote 3 of the same 2011 module, and the source of two per-ton cost figures still in circulation | Located in no public or archived form. | 2026‑08‑06 |
| Esaki R, Macario A, commentary published by Medscape, 2009 | The 2011 module’s footnote for the operating room’s share of hospital waste | Behind a registration wall. Not obtained, and a commentary rather than a study in any case. | 2026‑08‑06 |
| American Hospital Association and ASHE, Sustainability Roadmap for Hospitals, the page formerly at sustainabilityroadmap.org/pims/42 | Reference 20 of Hsu 2020, and the proximate source of a share figure widely attributed to the CDC | The address now redirects to a general landing page and the cited content is gone. Printed here without a link for that reason. | 2026‑08‑06 |
| Wilson M, The economics of fluid waste disposal, Outpatient Surgery Magazine, November 2014;XV(11) | Widely credited with the $0.28 a pound disposal price, though it postdates the 2011 module that is the earliest publication of that price we located | The original address redirects to aorn.org and returns 404. Every Internet Archive capture we found is truncated by a login wall part-way through the first section; the 2015-03-26 capture yields 5,647 characters of text and stops at “Have an account? Please log in”. We do not know what cost figures the article carries or what form they take. Nothing from it is quoted anywhere on this site. | 2026‑08‑06 |
Compiled by hand while following citation chains hop by hop. The chains themselves, with each hop’s status and retrieval date, are set out in the claims ledger.
What is not indexed here, and why
The eleven sewer-use ordinances
The municipal codes behind Register B are cited in their own rows rather than duplicated here. That is not tidiness. Several of them could only be retrieved through an archived capture because the commercial host that publishes them refuses automated requests, and each row therefore carries its own retrieval method as well as its own date. Copying eleven such rows into a second hand-maintained list is how the second list ends up disagreeing with the first.
The state surgical-smoke instruments
Every bill number, chapter number and public-act number in Register C was read against that legislature’s own primary source before its row shipped, and each row names the publisher it was read at. A state we could not verify has no bill number in its row at all. The register is the list; a second copy of twenty-odd legislature citations would add nothing but a surface to go stale.
The records behind the history of this domain
The documents that establish what this domain used to be — the former registrant’s corporate filings and the federal clearance record for the device it made — are cited in full, with links and retrieval dates, on About and in the Domain Record. They are deliberately not given index entries here. An index entry is a maintained reference artifact, and a maintained reference to a former occupant’s corporate and device records, published at that occupant’s former address, is the one thing this publication most needs not to look like. Where those documents are used, they are cited on the page that uses them.
Standards that are sold rather than published
Several of the documents a reader might expect on a site about operating rooms are copyrighted standards sold by their publishers. We have not bought them, we have not read them, and we will not print their text. Where one of them holds a position that matters, we say whose position it is and where it is published; we do not quote it at length and we do not summarise it as though we had read it. This is also why one article on plumbing and building feasibility is not in the launch slate: an article on a site whose whole promise is that it prints the sentence cannot be built on sources whose sentences it may not print.
How this index is maintained
By hand, by one person, in the same file as the rest of the site. There is no database, no import and no automation.
There is deliberately no checksum for any document, no automated link-health service, and no counter announcing how many addresses currently resolve. Each of those is a trust claim a reader cannot use. A hash is a claim about a file you would need the file to check. A green tick from a link checker is a claim about a moment that has already passed by the time you read it. A count of working links is worse than either, because it invites you to believe a number that one click can contradict, and the click is the thing we want you to make.
What is offered instead is narrower and, we think, more useful: the citation, the issuing body, the version we read, the date a person here last opened it, and — where the official channel is dead or unreadable — a plain statement of that, naming the capture we read in its place. When an address dies we do not remove the entry. We mark it, name the archived copy, and log the change in the change log.
If a link here is broken, or an entry is wrong, or a document you can reach has moved, tell us at [email protected]. Repairs are logged; the ones that change what a page says are also published at Corrections.