President Signs Bill to Control Medical Wastes

President Reagan has signed legislation designed to control infectious medical wastes such as those that washed up on Atlantic Coast beaches last summer, the White House announced Wednesday.

“This bill is an important step forward in the protection of our environment because it will ensure that those who generate, handle or dispose of medical waste are accountable, and it will encourage proper handling and disposal of such potentially dangerous waste,” Reagan said in a statement issued as he campaigned on behalf of Vice President George Bush.

The bill, which the President signed Tuesday, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a system for tracking such wastes from production to disposal.

Applies to 10 States

Initially, the system would apply to 10 states: Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The program, however, could become national in scope because any other state could decide to have its medical waste covered by the plan.

Congress acted after waves of used syringes, vials of AIDS-infected blood and other hospital waste washed up on beaches along the East Coast, Lake Michigan and Lake Erie during the summer. The waste forced some beaches to close because of the threat of hepatitis and other diseases.

The new law requires the EPA to set up a system to track dangerous waste from hospitals, labs and clinics to its disposal. Included in the paper-trail tracking system would be blood, hypodermic needles, scalpels and surgical and laboratory waste that have been in contact with infectious agents.