Biosafety Manual
Safety guidance, policies, and procedures for work with biological materials
Sharps Disposal
Summary
How to manage and dispose of sharps in labs, residential House buildings, and common spaces.
Who is this for?
- Building and operations management.
- Lab and research staff.
Disposing of sharps at Harvard
Sharps can cut or puncture your skin. Safely disposing of sharps helps prevent incidents like injuries and exposures.
Physical sharps include any items that could puncture or cut skin, including needles, broken glass, syringes, razor blades, scalpels, slides, and cover slips.
Use sharps disposal containers for safe disposal and to avoid injuring staff who handle biological waste.
You must dispose of all needles as sharps. Never put unused needles in the regular trash.
Lab-related sharps
Biological labs should manage all sharps as biological sharps, including clean sharps.
Examples of biological sharps waste include needles and broken glass contaminated with biological materials.
To dispose of biologically contaminated physical sharps:
- Place sharps in a red sharps disposal container. Do not overfill the container.
- Dispose of the container when it is three-quarters full:
- Single-use containers: Close the container and put it in a biological waste bin.
- Reusable containers (HMS and HSDM): Request a waste pickup.
To dispose of physical sharps from labs that are not contaminated with biological materials:
1. Prepare sharps for disposal
- Ensure that sharps do not contain liquid.
Manage sharps that came into contact with mercury or other regulated waste separately from sharps with minimal or solvent residue.
Examples of regulated waste include arsenic compounds, inorganic cyanide salts, osmium tetroxide, P-listed materials, and sodium azide.
- Before disposing of syringes, empty any remaining liquid into your hazardous waste liquid container in your satellite accumulation area (SAA) by depressing the plunger completely.
- Dispose of metal blades as disposal restricted waste (DRW). If your lab cannot separate blades from non-biological sharps, collect them both together in an appropriate container.
2. Collect sharps in a container
Collect sharps in a puncture-proof container:
- Consider using green sharps containers, shatter-resistant glass jars, or small black sharps containers.
- Avoid using red biological sharps containers unless the biohazard symbol is completely defaced.
- Never use 1 gal plastic jars, as they are not puncture proof.
- Never use yellow sharps containers, as they are too similar to radioactive sharps containers.
3. Label the container
- Affix an appropriate label to the container based on the contents:
- Chemical hazardous waste label: Sharps contaminated with air, mercury, P-listed materials, or water reactives.
- DRW label: Non-hazardous, non-biological, and non-radioactive sharps or empty syringes or sharps with chemical or solvent residue.
- For DRW labels, include the date you started accumulating the waste and mark the non-biological sharps checkbox.
- Place the container near (but not in) your SAA for pickup.
4. Request a waste pickup
When the waste container is three-quarters full, request a waste pickup.
Sharps in residential Houses and common areas
Building and operations management can use EHS resources and support to dispose of sharps in residential Houses and common areas, including how to provide sharps disposal containers.
Contact Harvard University Health Services about how to provide individual sharps disposal containers for students.
Related resources
Find documents and online tools to manage sharps disposal.
Disposal Restricted Waste Poster
Printable poster about disposal restricted waste
Waste Pickups and Supplies
Request waste pickups and supplies
EHS support
Contact EHS for more information about general sharps disposal, including sharps disposal in residential Houses and common areas.
Contact lab_safety@harvard.edu or your Lab Safety Advisor (LSA) for more information about sharps disposal in labs, including:
- Biological and non-biological sharps disposal posters.
- Reusable sharps containers for HMS Harvard Longwood Campus buildings.