Medical Waste Found Behind Boise Home

A Boise man found the Dumpster behind his parents’ home filled with medical garbage, including syringes and bloody bandages.

“I was exposed to it all,” Steve Barnes, 34, said Friday.

“What gets me is nobody gives a damn.”

Exactly how the trash got there was uncertain.

“I could see vials of used medicine, and some syringes and that,” said Bryan Poulson, medical waste coordinator for BFI Waste Systems, Boise’s trash hauler.

The Dumpster contained medical paperwork - including telephone messages, prescription information and records - with the names and addresses of physicians and dentists in Ada and Canyon counties.

None contacted Friday knew how their garbage ended up in the metal bin.

Hospitals face strict regulations about how they dispose of needles and other sharp instruments, as well as anything contaminated with blood or other bodily fluids.

But that is not true of small medical offices, Poulson and publichealth officials said.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires sharp instruments be in punctureproof containers.

But neither OSHA nor state law dictates where the waste gets dumped, said Dick Schultz, administrator of the state Division of Health.

Poulson suspects some of the waste may be from Canyon County.

The landfill there no longer takes medical waste.