I apologize for not remembering who wrote this, but:
<<While they do not require biohazard stickers,
we were required to do so either by a recent survey from the Joint
Commition of Hospital Accreditation or the State of PA survey. So, it
is there. Do I think it needs to be there? No but someone up the chain
of command did and this is a battle that I don't feel that causing is
any harm to our breastfeeding mothers and babies.>>
When I was the ILCA Liaison to the Joint Commission, I asked them about this
very issue -- we have been around the block on this more than once. On
January 31, 2006, I received a response from them.
"Jan -- the Joint Commission standards do not address labeling of breast
milk (sic) as a biohazard. In this instance, the Joint Commission would defer
to OSHA. Please see the following letter from our files...."
The letter is dated December 14, 1992, and is from Roger Clark, Director of
OSHA. In part, the letter reads, "Breast milk (sic) is not included in the
standard's definition of "other potentially infectious materials." Therefore
contact with breast milk does not constitute occupational exposure, as
defined by the standard. This determination was based on the Centers for Disease
Control's findings that human breast milk has not been implication in the
transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or the hepatitis B virus
(HBV) to workers although it has been implicated in perinatal trasmission of
HIV and the hepatitis surface antigen has been found in the milk of mothers
infected with HBV. For this reason, gloves should be worn by health care
workers in situations where exposures to breast milk might be frequent, for
example, in milk banking."
Interestingly enough, the original letter to OSHA was written on ILCA's
behalf when Linda Kutner was president and I was past president. Something we
were concerned about then, but an issue on which neither the CDC, OSHA, or
JCAHO have changed their minds in the last 15 years.
SO, if any hospitals are labeling breastmilk as a biohazard, they are doing
it out of ignorance of what those three eminent authorities are recommending.
Jan Barger, RN, MA, IBCLC
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