Potential of Saliva-Based Diagnostics to Decrease Hazardous Waste Generation

Green laboratories that reduce the impact on the environment by promoting sustainable best practices such as waste reduction, have gained importance in recent times. Researchers have developed new technologies and validated a wide range of salivary biomarkers that can soon make the use of saliva a clinical reality. Saliva, like blood, contains an abundance of biomarkers and has tremendous potential to become an alternative diagnostic fluid to blood. Saliva collection method is noninvasive, painless, and convenient to subjects compared to the conventional blood collection process. This chapter explores the potential advantages of using saliva as an alternative to blood, in terms of the volume and effect of the biomedical waste generated. Experimental evidence and theoretical explanation to how saliva-based diagnostics can substantially decrease the volume of potentially infectious, pathological hazardous waste generated by laboratories and impact global waste management strategies, are illustrated in this chapter.