Comparative Analysis of Household Hazardous Waste in Different Seasons of Year(Case Study)

Background & Aims of the Study: Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) are the wastes can potentially increase the hazardous properties of municipal solid waste in the landfill, incineration, or composting. The lack of information about their generation and composition hinders the creation of special programs for their collection and treatment, making these wastes a potential threat to human health and the environment. Therefore the aim of this study was to determine the quantity, quality and to be able to compare the results of four seasons, regarding consumption patterns and solid waste generation rates. Materials & Methods: A cross-sectional study was done in 2015-2016 years in Isfahan compost plant (waste receipt place) and the analyses were performed on household hazardous waste in four seasons of the year. The Shapiro–Wilk test was used to evaluate the normality of the quantitative data. Results: HHW comprised 0.6% of municipal solid waste (MSW). The largest percentage of HHW in total HHW were home cleaners in spring (37.53%), summer (26.82%), and fall (39.78%), because home cleaners are the daily necessities of residential households but in winter medical products (34.70%) were more than others. Probably cause of the high percentage of medical products is disease outbreaks in winter. Generally, the most hazardous materials in MSW included home cleaning (0.2%), medical products (0.19%) and self-care equipment (0.11%) and the lowest were biological infection materials. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the production of HHW in Isfahan is independent of different seasons of the year. Household cleaners and personal protective equipment and medicine had formed the highest percentage of household hazardous waste.