Medical Debris’ Source Still a Puzzle : But Washed-Up Wristband Is Traced to Tri-City Patient

San Diego County health department officials continued to puzzle Tuesday over the origin of medical waste, including a syringe and a vial of blood, that washed up onto La Jolla beaches over the weekend.

Authorities have confirmed that a hospital name tag found amid the debris came from a patient at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, but they have been unable to positively identify the source of the other material.

Gary Stephany, environmental health director for the Department of Health Services, said the syringe, vial of blood, a bottle of serum and other items found on Black’s Beach lack markings that would allow officials to trace them.

“Really, all we have right now that we can positively identify is a wristband from a hospital,” Stephany said, noting that officials remain unsure whether the materials landed on the same beach by coincidence.

Wristband Confirmation

Officials at Tri-City Medical Center confirmed that the wristband came from their facility, but said the syringe and other debris probably did not.

Jennifer Velez, a hospital spokeswoman, said the syringes used at Tri-City are stamped with a brand name, but the syringe found on the beach Saturday had no identifying markings.

“We were sure happy to learn it was not our syringe,” Velez said. “We were very concerned about this.”

The vials, meanwhile, are generic and “could be anyone’s,” Velez said, noting that Tri-City Medical Center typically uses vials with no definitive markings.

Velez said hospital officials planned to meet with county health authorities this morning to review the facility’s disposal practices for medical waste and attempt to determine how the name tag could have ended up on the beach.

The band bears the name Antonio Cunningham, a patient at the hospital last week who was given X-rays and treated for injuries suffered in an automobile accident.

Stories About Name Tag Conflict

Although health officials had not been able to make contact with Cunningham, Stephany said the patient told a local television reporter that the name tag had been disposed of at the hospital.

That story conflicts with the recollections of the Tri-City Medical Center staff. Velez said hospital officials quizzed the emergency room staff about Cunningham’s visit and were told that the patient left the grounds with his name tag still on.

The Times could not reach Cunningham for comment Tuesday.

Stephany said authorities have also been unable to reconcile incongruities in appearance between the name tag, which is only days old, and the syringe and vials, which look weather-beaten.

“It doesn’t really fit the picture right now,” Stephany said. “That’s what’s puzzling to us. The way it’s going, we may not go much further than to try to figure how the wristband showed up there.”

Officials with BFI Medical Waste Systems, the firm that handles the disposal of medical waste for Tri-City, said it is highly unlikely the debris found its way to the beach once BFI got hold of it.

Plenty of Room for More

Bob Spurgin, the firm’s vice president, said there is simply no incentive for the company to dump in the sea, noting that BFI handles more than 400,000 pounds of medical waste in San Diego County alone and has plenty of capacity for more.

In addition, the firm’s day-to-day operations are tightly regulated, making it improbable that the waste somehow got dumped once BFI picked it up, Spurgin said.

“There’s no reason to suspect we would have had anything to do with it,” he said. The company handles medical waste from 2,000 customers in the state.

In the past, Spurgin said, small amounts of medical waste on beaches have been traced to disgruntled hospital employees out to jab their bosses or residents eager to scare tourists away from a particular stretch of shoreline.

The health department’s Stephany said there was no potential for harm from the vials containing blood and serum because the bottles were intact.

A hospital or clinic that generates more than 220 pounds of medical or infectious wastes a year must undergo an inspection before securing a hazardous-waste permit from the county.

With those regulations, it is the smaller medical offices peppered around the county that pose the greatest risk of illegally dumping wastes in the ocean or at other inappropriate spots, Stephany said.

In the past two years, health department officials have recorded 20 incidents of small amounts of medical waste illegally dumped on land or washing up on the shoreline, Stephany said.

“The real danger is the potential for street people, the homeless, rummaging through trash dumpsters for aluminum cans or bottles to salvage and coming onto medical waste,” he said. “They could be infected. But I don’t know of any cases, and I hope I never know of any.”

Bags of medical waste that washed up on East Coast beaches this summer triggered panic, but the problems in San Diego aren’t nearly as severe, Stephany said. On three previous occasions, debris washed ashore, but in each case the amounts were relatively small and there was no threat to the public, he said.