Biomedical waste management in dental practice during the COVID-19: A questionnaire survey and a narrative review

Background: Environmental hazards have been a highly debated topic worldwide for a considerable time. During the pandemic, the benefits of environmental cleanliness in terms of increased water quality, air quality, has been reported oftentimes. However, the generation of biomedical waste comprising health care worker utilities such as masks, and gloves, has increased and this increase is calculated in terms of alarming statistics which shows 10 fold higher prediction of Biomedical waste than before. Recent studies by researchers support a cleaner environment; however, an equally increasing amount of biomedical waste generated needs to be monitored strictly alongside stringent regulations for safe disposal of biomedical waste which to be instilled in the mind of the general public. Materials and Methods: Databases like Pubmed and Google scholar were systematically searched for articles with the specific keywords “biomedical waste management in dental practice” which identified 17 articles on 13/09.2020 where filters were applied and restricted to 2020. A detailed analysis of the 17 articles was done and few articles were considered in this narrative review. Results: Our survey results show that the generation of biomedical waste and the awareness of the dental fraternity is very less, almost 41% don’t know the amount of waste generated in India. Conclusion: Amid growing COVID-19 disease incidence, a day-to-day assessment of biomedical waste generation with individual social responsibility is a dire need of the hour to combat and overcome the disease.