Trash Chute Door6428530
Wow… What a scary website to see. Trash bags caught in the trash chute in such a way that it prevents the chute doors from automatically closing. And make no error about it, the trash chute doors are required to close and latch, automatically.
Section 19.5.4.3 of the 2000 edition of the Life Safety Code demands trash chutes to discharge into trash collection rooms and the trash collection rooms cannot be utilized for any other objective. So, that means you cannot shop items that are not related to the trash chute in the room, such as floor scrubber machines.
The scene in the image is generally brought on by the failure to empty the cart in time, before it fills up to the point where the bags of trash prevent the chute doors from closing. In today’s economy, it is not all that uncommon to discover that employees reductions in the Environmental Services (housekeeping) division stop adequate staffing to eliminate the trash bags. While this might be a legitimate purpose, someone at this hospital forgot the importance of removing the trash on a normal basis. They need to make this a priority.
From a life security point of view, it would be better to remove the cart and allow the bags to fall onto the floor. This way it would take a lot more bags of trash to pile up before it would obstruct the chute door from closing. I’m not certain what the hospital’s Infection Control expert would say about that, but I would recommend it as an option if the ES division can't empty the cart often enough.
If you decide to permit the bags of trash to accumulate on the floor in the trash chute discharge space, I recommend you conduct a danger assessment to analyze the dangers to patient security. This way, you can demonstrate to a surveyor that the dangers were regarded as if the surveyor has a problem with bags o’ trash scattered on the floor.
