STUDY ON WASTEWATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS IN HOSPITALS OF IRAN

nowadays, water resources shortage is one of the most important issues for environmental engineers andmanagers as well as its conservation due to population growth and ever-increasing water demands.besides, hospital wastewater has the same quality as municipal wastewater, but may also potentiallycontain various hazardous components. in this paper, physical and chemical specifications of producedwastewater in hospitals of iran were investigated experiments. results were compared with the effluentparameters of wastewater standards of iranian department of the environment. 70 governmental hospitalsfrom different provinces of iran were selected by purposive (non-random) sampling method. for dataanalysis, spss and excel softwares were applied. the findings of the study showed that 52% of thesurveyed hospitals were not equipped and 48% were equipped with wastewater treatment systems. themean of biochemical oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand and total suspended solids of theeffluent of wastewater treatment systems were reported as 113, 188 and 99 mg/l respectively.comparison of the indicators between effluents of wastewater treatment systems and the standards ofdepartments of the environment, showed the inefficiency in these systems and it was concluded thatdespite the recent improvements in hospital wastewater treatment systems, they should be upgraded basedon the remarks in this paper.