Thread: Public exposed as contagious medical waste routinely trucked

Radiation, infectious disease
fill blood-spattered garbage
Public exposed as contagious medical waste routinely trucked across America's highways

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Posted: June 29, 2009
9:39 pm Eastern


By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


Contaminated needles and scalpels, bloodied bandages, body parts, unused prescription drugs, soiled hospital garments, radioactive waste and refuse tainted with infectious disease: These are only a few items that may be discarded on a curbside, abandoned in a nearby lake or piled in a dumpster headed for the local landfill.

Some say Americans are simply oblivious to the imminent risk of major hazards and contagions spreading throughout their communities at any given time.

Former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., grew concerned about medical waste hauling after Sept. 11. He told WND that 15 years ago, the nation's hospitals incinerated much of the infectious waste on site. However, the Environmental Protection Agency mandated strict guidelines for incinerators after concerns about air pollution, forcing most hospitals to hire truck drivers to haul medical waste away.

"What happened was that most hospitals and most doctors' offices started going off site because they had no other way of treating it on site," Pombo said. "So this industry was born that picked up medical waste and took it to a centralized site. Those centralized sites are sometimes several hundred miles away from the doctor's office or the hospital where they're picking this stuff up."

Darrell Henry, executive director of the Healthcare Waste and Emergency Preparedness Coalition, expressed concerns about national safety when contagious medical waste that could be contaminated with hepatitis, tuberculosis, flu or even small pox is trucked across America's roadways.

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"More than 80 percent of the hospitals in the country truck this stuff somewhere," he told WND. "They throw this stuff on the back dock and let it sit there. A truck comes and picks it up, and now it's a mobile Petri dish moving across our highways, going to be treated somewhere when you could have treated it on site and been done with it."


Biohazard bags and sharps piled into bins at medical facility (photo: Healthcare Waste and Emergency Preparedness Coalition)



While they are subject to the same background checks as other truck drivers, workers who haul infectious waste often do not have special training or licensing for dealing with contagious materials. San-I-Pak World Health Systems Vice President Arthur McCoy told WND some drivers are drug addicts who collect medical scraps and sift through the piles in search of their next high.


Trucker hauls medical waste


"A lot of times these guys have been arrested because they want to get into the medical waste and try to recover narcotics or prescription medicines," he said. "Then, after these guys are contaminated, they go to the same gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants as the rest of us. There's a lot of cross contamination."

Each year, there are numerous news reports of medical waste trucks involved in accidents on major U.S. highways. In many cases, hospital refuse and even hazardous radioactive medical waste is strewn across roads, discarded in ditches or illegally dumped on beaches and in America's communities.

Pombo said some companies charge medical facilities up to $20 per pound to haul infectious waste away.

"To save a few hundred dollars, they might throw it on the dumpster the day before trash day, and it will be hauled to the regular trash facility," he said. "It then goes through the regular transfer station with people separating out recyclables. They don't know what they're being exposed to."

McCoy said he has witnessed small clinics discarding numerous red biohazard bags in trash bins.

"I was just casually driving by a little medical complex and saw medical waste bags piling up out of a dumpster," he said. "That's how common this is. It's pretty scary."

One such example was documented in the following KVUE News report after police found hundreds of syringes near a busy shopping center in Cedar Park, Texas, in October:


wnd.com

This is horrible!

I never thought of truck drivers as junkies-a pretty scary thought when you've got an 18 wheeler coming up behind you!