Pays Avalon $100,000 for cleanup costs

Pennsylvania dentist Thomas W. McFarland Jr. was sentenced Friday for dumping the needles and other medical-type waste that washed up in Avalon, Capre May County, during the last week of August 2008, causing the borough to close its beaches five times.

McFarland, 61, of Wynnewood, Pa., was sentenced to four years of probation by state Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Batten in Cape May Courthouse.

McFarland paid $100,000 to the Borough of Avalon Friday by cashier’s check as restitution and as a contribution for environmental programs and projects, at the discretion of the town.

McFarland pleaded guilty on March 15 to fourth-degree unlawful discharge of water pollutants, an amended count of a state grand jury indictment obtained by the Division of Criminal Justice on Nov. 18, 2008.

McFarland, who owns a house in the Avalon Manor section of Middle Township, admitted that he took his small motor boat into Townsend Inlet at the north end of Avalon on Aug. 22, 2008, and dumped a bag of waste from his dental practice in Wynnewood.

Beginning the next day, dental waste was found washed up along a stretch of beach at the north end of Avalon. The waste included approximately 260 “Accuject” dental-type needles, 180 cotton swabs, a number of blue and white plastic capsules used to hold dental filling material, and other items.

Officials in Avalon alerted the state Department of Environmental Protection, which notified the Division of Criminal Justice. The division’s Environmental Crimes unit immediately began an investigation with the Avalon police and the county prosecutor’s office.

Investigators traced the source of the dental waste, and the Attorney General’s office offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Certain information obtained in the first days of the investigation pointed to McFarland’s practice.

Avalon officials recovered a wrapped dental drill bit bearing a lot number. Detectives contacted the manufacturer and learned McFarland’s practice was one of a small number of practices in the Mid-Atlantic states that bought drill bits from the lot in question.

Detectives also determined that he received promotional products from Accuject at a time when they were distributing needles bearing the lot numbers that washed up in Avalon.

On Sept. 2, 2008, McFarland went to the Avalon police and admitted dumping the dental waste. After searching his beach house, Boston Whaler boat and SUV in New Jersey, investigators obtained a search warrant for his dental office in Pennsylvania and executed it on Sept. 4. They discovered evidence corroborating McFarland’s statement that the waste came from his practice. McFarland was charged by complaint warrant at that time and released without bail. The state of Pennsylvania subsequently suspended his dental license.

The Attorney General’s office said that there had not been a similar case of a person being charged with dumping medical waste directly into the ocean in 20 years.

Supervising Deputy Attorney General Ed Bonanno, head of the Environmental Crimes Section, prosecuted the case.

Assemblymen Nelson T. Albano and Matthew W. Milam (both D-Cape May) decried as too lenient the probation sentence given McFarland.

“While it was good to hear that Dr. McFarland was found guilty of his actions, his punishment is much too lenient for the havoc he caused,” Albano said. “Polluters who foul our beaches must pay dearly for tarnishing the shore’s reputation – something today’s sentence does not adequately enforce.”

Milam said, “Dr. McFarland’s actions had severe economic repercussions on the region — repercussions that his light sentence does not take into account. just one person’s reckless behavior can have a drastic negative impact on our beach towns and small businesses, something that the new beach dumping fine structure is meant to express. It’s my hope that in the future, the courts see fit to put polluters on the hook, not just for environmental damages, but economic ones too.”

After learning of the incident, Albano and Milam (both D-Atlantic/Cape May/Cumberland) sponsored legislation (A-3271), enacted earlier this year, doubling the fines for illegal medical-waste dumping in New Jersey waters to $100,000 a day.

Blogged from T. HESTER SR., NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Medical Waste Services is a bio-hazard removal, collection and disposal company focusing in and around the Tri-County area of Southern Florida. Taken our years of knowledge and experience in the route and service business from Shred Trust, we saw the need to provide medical waste disposal in South Florida.
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As a result of highly publicized incidents involving the presence of medical  wastes on public beaches and resultant beach closures, public attention recently has focused on the subject of medical waste management. The issues raised, however, extend far beyond purely aesthetic concerns. Medical waste disposal practices further raise serious issues concerning health and environmental risks.

An understanding of these issues often is hampered by a relative scarcity of data. State legislators and federal lawmakers have been actively working on legislation intended to ameliorate the problems posed by medical waste. This paper will examine some of the major issues raised by medical waste management. Attention also will be directed toward legislative efforts in this area.

Defining medical wastes

All wastes generated by health-related facilities are considered medical wastes. Other possible sources include research laboratories, doctors’ offices, clinics, biotechnology firms, nursing homes, veterinary facilities and funeral homes. The wastes created by larger generators certainly should not divert attention from the problems caused by smaller generators.

Judging what actually is “infectious” is most difficult. Vastly differing working definitions of “infectious waste” may result in inconsistent treatment, storage and disposal practices. Inconsistencies, in turn, may affect waste management costs, the choice of treatment technology, and ultimately, the potential health and environmental risks posed by such wastes. An estimated 10 to 15% of hospital waste s are considered “infectious.” However, depending on particular definitions and procedures used, the percentage may vary from 3 to 90.

The Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and various state entities have attempted to define infectious waste based on various waste characteristics. The EPA, for instance, defines infectious waste as waste capable of producing an infectious disease. It requires, in addition, consideration of at least four variables associated with disease causation: dose, resistance, portal of entry and presence of a pathogen of sufficient virulence.

In 1987, the CDC published recommendations providing in part that blood and body fluids from all patients be considered potentially infected with human immunodeficiency virus and/or other blood-borne pathogens. But later, in June 1988, the CDC limited the scope of its 1987 recommendations to blood and other body fluids containing visible blood, to semen and vaginal secretions, and to other specific fluids.

The application of EPA, as opposed to CDC, guidelines has major implications for hospitals and other generators of medical waste who are struggling to stay within the law and concomitantly to minimize or eliminate potential health risks. For example, the EPA considers communicable disease wastes to be infectious, but the CDC recommends that communicable disease wastes be managed according to pertinent hospital policy.

Another question concerns whether infectious wastes should, in addition, be classified as “hazardous” and regulated accordingly. The “hazardous” designation might require more costly disposal methods and create problems concerning the siting of hazardous waste facilities. It also might result in more aggressive prosecution of illegal dumpers, lead to the creation of a manifest system for the effective tracking of infectious wastes and better management of such wastes.

Broad categories of waste that should be considered “infectious” are: human blood and blood products; pathological waste; contaminated “sharps” (needles, surgical blades, scissors, etc.); cultures and stocks of infectious agents; isolation wastes; and contaminated animal carcasses and body parts. Other “infectious” materials include: wastes from dialysis units; soiled dressings, sponges, surgical gloves and other wastes from surgery and autopsy; slides, specimen containers, cover slips and other laboratory wastes; and potentially contaminated and infectious equipment used in connection with patient care.

Severity of the problem

The general public has been exposed to incidents involving alleged improper disposal of biomedical wastes because of massive news media coverage. Beaches on the East Coast were closed when medical wastes including sutures, bloody bandages, and vials of blood infected with AIDS — washed ashore. Beaches in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island were endangered with hypodermics, gauze dressings, surgical gloves and blood vials Wastes were found on beaches stretching from Maine to Texas, and 200 hypodermic needles found their way to Lake Erie’s shores. The EPA estimates that about 3.2 million tons of medical wastes from hospitals are produced yearly. This figure represents about 2% of the total municipal solid waste stream. Other estimates, though, range from 2.1 to 4.8 million tons annually.