Officials eye ways to stop dumping of medical waste

By Linwood Outlaw -- loutlaw@nvdaily.com

FRONT ROYAL -- Bags containing hazardous medical waste have been "unlawfully" disposed of at the Warren County Solid Waste Transfer Station, and the problem needs to be curbed before it creates serious safety risks, officials said Friday.

In the past several months, the transfer station in Bentonville has received a number of empty red bags labeled "Bio-Hazard/Medical Waste," Deputy County Administrator Richard J. Magnifico said.

On Thursday, however, a red bag containing "what we believe is hazardous medical waste materials" was found at the station, Magnifico said. Another red bag filled with such materials and a sealed medical sharps container labeled "Bio-Hazard" was found at the transfer station on Friday.

It was not immediately known who is disposing of the materials at the station, Magnifico said.

"You can't waste a lot of time on an empty, unused bag. So, we didn't get too upset about the past issue. Once the bags came in with contents, that's a different story," Magnifico said in a phone interview on Friday afternoon. "What we've done is asked our hazardous waste team through the fire department to come and examine and open the bags and see if they can find any information contained within the bag that would identify its source. Another thing that we're doing is trying to examine the waste that comes in from the different contractors that pick up waste at medical facilities."

In some cases, transportation of regulated medical waste by medical personnel requires no prior certification to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. However, commercial operators must file certification that their businesses meet requirements before accepting infectious material for transport, according to DEQ's official Web site.

The county's transfer station is not allowed by state code to accept hazardous medical waste, and officials are concerned about its staff potentially being exposed to waste materials. They are also concerned about such materials spilling over into the daily waste stream.

"If somebody throws needles into a bag, and didn't put them into any type of restrictive container, if they went to remove the bag, they might get stuck by the needle, and not know what the needle was," Magnifico said. "We want to protect the staff here."

The county collects between 80 to 90 tons of waste per day, and "trying to identify and remove one bag is an enormous and unsafe task," according to a memo sent out by Magnifico. "The medical facilities who are contributing this bio-hazardous waste are functioning both unlawfully and unethically in their waste disposition," the memo says.

Representatives of the Virginia Department of Health, Warren Memorial Hospital and Department of Environmental Quality have been invited to a work session Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the community meeting room at the Warren County Government Center to discuss how to spread the word about properly disposing of medical waste.

"I'm trying to get a message out not only to the businesses, but to the public. A lot of people use needles, and there is a safe way of disposing of needles," Magnifico said.