RAS question
Red category biomedical waste includes:
Correct answer: (D) Contaminated disposable items like tubing, syringes, catheters.
Red-category biomedical waste includes contaminated disposable plastic items such as tubing, syringes without needles and catheters.
Explanation
CPCB's healthcare-waste guideline identifies red category waste as contaminated recyclable waste, primarily plastics, generated from disposable items. Its examples match option D: tubing, bottles, intravenous tubes and sets, catheters, urine bags, syringes without needles, fixed-needle syringes after the needles are cut, vacutainers and gloves. The logic is segregation by material and treatment pathway: these are not ordinary dry waste or food waste, and they are not sharps or glassware placed in a separate stream. Red-category disposable plastics are to be sterilised, such as through autoclaving, before recycling. That is why contaminated tubing, syringes and catheters form the red-category answer.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) Paper waste is not part of CPCB's red-category list, which is framed around contaminated recyclable plastics from disposable healthcare items.
- (B) Food waste does not fit the red-category definition because the cited category covers contaminated recyclable plastic biomedical items, not ordinary kitchen or canteen waste.
- (C) Glass bottles are not the red-category plastic stream; CPCB treats glassware separately from red-category contaminated disposable plastics.
Concept
This tests biomedical-waste colour coding under Environment and Ecology, where the exam often asks candidates to map a waste type to its segregation category. It recurs because the colour code decides the disposal pathway, not merely the place where the waste was generated.