Premicide Sanitizes, Solidifies Infective Medical Fluids

OBF Industries (Downer's Grove, Ill.) has won a patent, and EPA registration, of what it claims is the only product available to sanitize and solidify liquid medical wastes. The product is expected to find use in infectious medical wastes from hospitals, clinical work, and spent tissue cultures or wash media from pharmaceutical production. Allegiance Corp. (McGaw Park, Ill.) will market and distribute the product, called Premicide.

Recently patented by OBF, Premicide is a formulation of solid glutaraldehyde and a proprietary polymer precursor. Glutaraldehyde, used in liquid form for sanitizing surgical instruments, is an antimicrobial effective against infectious organisms such as HIV, Hepatitis B, Herpes Simplex I, Poliovirus, adenovirus, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella cholerasuis, Pseudomonas aeruginnosa, and Bacillus subtilis spores.

End-users simply add the powdered antimicrobial-prepolymer mixture to waste in a ratio of one ounce of powder to 1000 mL of liquid. The resulting solid contains no free water and may be incinerated to less than 1 percent ash, or disposed of as treated, sanitized solid waste in a sanitary landfill.

During product development OBF microbiologists worked with scientists at Union Carbide, which produces glutaraldehyde, on the powdered formulation. Approvals approval for selling Premicide required first registering the product with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, then with individual state Departments of Environmental Protection. To market the product as an approved medical waste treatment requires passing even stricter state and local standards for efficacy.

Angelo De Palma