According to the Coalition for Safe Community Needle Disposal, there are over 9 million people in the United States who use syringes outside of medical care facilities resulting in about 3 billion needle uses per year. Six million are people with medical conditions that require injections. The other three million are intravenous drug users.
Needles disposed of in household trash present hazards to garbage collectors and workers at landfills. Likewise, needle users who drop unprotected sharps into the trash at work put maintenance and cleaning staff at risk. When a worker is stuck with a needle of unknown source it is always treated as an exposure to blood borne pathogens. This results in months of testing and anxiety for the worker. Will they get Hepatitis? Will they get HIV? What will this mean for their life, their family, their job, their future?
There are several safe methods of sharps disposal recommended by the EPA. At-Home containers and needle destruction devices are available. The North American Syringe Exchange Network allows sharps users to exchange used needles for new needles and can be found at www.nasen.org . Mail back programs and supervised collection sites can be found by contacting your local pharmacy. Most states have their own regulations on how needles should be disposed of. These can be found at http://www.safeneedledisposal.org/resslaws.html . Please do NOT put needles directly into the trash, down the toilet, or into recycling bins.
(AP Photo/Luis Romero)
Comments
There are no laws in PA for how consumers out of the medical system manage their sharps.......as home health nurses have discovered, many "support" agencies do not encourage disposal with them due to the cost of this activity.
There is a new device soon to be available which will enable insulin users to inject the medicine into the subcutaneous tissue, where it is best absorbed into the body. This device, called the J Tip, does not have a needle. It is currently being used at many hospitals to provide pain-free lidocaine injections prior to the insertion of an IV Catheter. Within 20 years we can be a needle-free society.
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