Three years ago, MDEQ announced the kick-off of a new voluntary program designed to reduce the number of household medical sharps in the municipal waste stream. Medical sharps include needles, syringes, lancets, and other sharp objects used to penetrate the skin for medical testing or for delivery of medication. Some estimates are that the number of medical sharps used in the home have doubled in the past 10 years due to an increasing prevalence of diabetes and an increase in the number of home pharmaceuticals delivered
by self-injection.
Medical sharps generated in the home are commonly disposed of with the rest of the household trash and set out on the curb to be picked up and taken to the local landfill. This means of disposal presents a safety hazard to workers in the waste disposal industry and can also present a hazard to the general public if trash bags containing loose sharps happen to get broken open and the contents scattered before they make it to the landfill.
MDEQ’s program is a voluntary partnership with local establishments such as pharmacies where the public may drop off their household sharps at no cost. The public is simply asked to make sure that the sharps are safely contained and sealed in a hard plastic container with a screw-on lid. MDEQ provides each drop-off collection station with an 18-gallon bin. When the bin is full of individual containers dropped off by the public, MDEQ arranges for the bin to be picked up and the contents disposed of in the same manner that
sharps generated in hospitals and other medical establishments are managed.
When the program was initiated in 2009, MDEQ had agreements with 89 pharmacies, fire stations, and other local establishments to serve as drop-off collection stations. “During the first year of operation, we picked up about 1,300 lbs of sharps,” says Bill Barnett, who manages the program on behalf of MDEQ. The program has continued to grow, both in the number of drop-off collection stations and the number of household sharps collected. According to Barnett, the program currently has 158 drop-off collection stations
in 91 communities, and is now collecting about 3,200 lbs of sharps annually. “It’s a rough estimate,” states Barnett, “but we believe these numbers translate into more than 40,000 sharps per month that are being kept out of home trash bags around the state.”
Barnett believes that the biggest challenge in advancing the program is in educating the public about the availability of the service. “So many people still do not know that there is a convenient drop-off location in their community. If we can be successful in finding more effective ways of getting the word out to the public about the availability of this service, the number of sharps collected could increase exponentially.”
For more information about safe disposal of household medical sharps, including a statewide list of drop-off collection stations, visit http://www.deq.state.ms.us/medsharps.
