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Variability of Greek dental solid waste production by different dentist groups

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Abstract

The objective of this work was to compare the composition and production rate of Greek dental solid waste (DSW) produced by three dentist groups of Xanthi, Greece, defined according to the country of their dental education/training: (1) dentists educated in Greece and other European Union (EU) countries, (2) dentists educated in Turkey, and (3) dentists educated in former Soviet Union and repatriated to Greece. All DSW produced by a total of 2542 patients in 20 dental practices from Xanthi, Greece, was collected, manually separated, and weighed over a period of four working weeks and classified according to Greek regulations. Production data below are presented as average (standard deviation in parenthesis). The average unit production rates of total DSW were 415(303) and 51.2(19.1) g/patient/day for dentists educated in Greece and other EU countries, 365(160) and 64.0(21.7) g/patient/day for dentists educated in Turkey, and 302(349) and 54.3(46.8) g/patient/day for dentists educated in former Soviet Union. Daily DSW production was correlated with daily number of patients and regression correlations were produced. Statistical analysis using the Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test was conducted to compare DSW production medians by the three dentist groups. Dentists educated in Turkey had statistically higher median patient-based unit production rates at α = 0.05 for total dental, total hazardous, total infectious, total toxic and domestic-type waste, compared to the other dentist groups.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the President of Xanthi Dental Association Dr. A. Pantazopoulos and all the participating dentists and their assistants for their valuable help during the study period. They, also, thank the President of Envirodent Dr. E. Tsigris for providing the hospital box containers for DSW collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, GR-671 00, Xanthi, Greece

    Evangelos A. Voudrias, Antonios Topalidis & Alexandros Mandalidis

  2. Xanthi, Greece

    Nikolaos Iosifidis

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  1. Evangelos A. Voudrias
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  2. Antonios Topalidis
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  3. Alexandros Mandalidis
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  4. Nikolaos Iosifidis
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Correspondence to Evangelos A. Voudrias.

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Voudrias, E.A., Topalidis, A., Mandalidis, A. et al. Variability of Greek dental solid waste production by different dentist groups. Environ Monit Assess 190, 418 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-018-6803-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-018-6803-3

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