Medical Waste Item Linked to Navy Ship

Navy officials said Monday that they have traced an orange bottle of pills that washed up in La Jolla last week to a batch of garbage that was dumped overboard by the U.S. amphibious transport dock Vancouver about 50 miles off the San Diego coast.

The announcement is the first direct link between an item of suspected medical waste, found on San Diego beaches during the past three weeks, and garbage dumped at sea by a Navy vessel. Previously, health officials were only able to learn that several other intravenous bags and packages of camouflage bandages were of military issue and came from a military supply depot in Tracy, Calif.

Cmdr. Ron Wildermuth said Monday that the pill bottle was improperly discarded by a young sailor and mingled with the common trash dumped at sea by the Vancouver west of La Jolla on Nov. 6. Thirteen days later, it was found at La Jolla Shores.

But one local health official cast doubt on the Navy’s story, saying that Coast Guard officials have told the county that the ocean’s currents are running to the north.

That would mean a bottle dumped 54 miles due west of La Jolla would have been carried farther north than the San Diego shoreline, said Larry Aker, assistant deputy director of the county’s Environmental Health Services.

“Here the Navy is saying that something that was dumped 50 miles offshore made it back, due east, 13 days later?” Aker said. “Dump something 50 miles out, and it really ought to be going north to Los Angeles,” he said. “That’s the information that was provided to us.”

Waste Found on Beach

The dispute over the bottle comes one day after two small syringes, six capsules of antihistamine and one ampul of sodium chloride were found on the beach near the Coronado Cays--the first evidence that medical waste is now floating into San Diego Bay.

Medical waste was also found Sunday at Pacific Beach, Solana Beach and near La Jolla. Among the items were syringes, a surgical glove, small bottles of iodine and an undetermined powder, and a packet of camouflage bandages, Aker said.

No items of medical waste were reported on the beaches Monday, he added.

Aker also said Monday that the health department is prepared to turn over its investigation to the Hazardous Waste Task Force, a group of 15 federal, state and local agencies charged with enforcing environmental-protection laws.

“We would like to feel that we’re at a point that we can turn over certain information to investigators and we won’t be talking any more publicly,” Aker said.

In addition, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s office in San Francisco said Monday that the federal agency would undertake its own investigation into the medical waste washing ashore in San Diego and Orange counties.

So far, Aker said, the health department’s probe into the medical wastes indicates that there are actually three sources for the material.

The first, he said, is just “average garbage” left behind at the beach, including common drugs, containers for people’s contact lenses, and surgical tubing used to tie around body boards.

The second source Aker identified as “parking lot garbage,” which includes syringes that drug users find in refuse containers behind doctors’ offices and medical complexes. “This is the average material that is found in the average beach environment, which includes parking lots and restrooms, where people go to score dope,” Aker said.

The third--and most troubling--source of wastes, Aker said, is what lifeguards, beach-goers and health officials have been finding along the high-tide mark since a vial of blood, a syringe with an attached needle, and a patient’s wristband washed up at Black’s Beach on Oct. 29.

Come From Large System

Items in this category include 10-milliliter bottles, iodine bottles, small ampuls and intravenous bags, Aker said. The items have stock numbers and recent expiration dates, indicating that they have come from a “large, elaborate system that discards material when it is outdated.”

Noting that at least three intravenous bags have been traced to the military supply depot at Tracy, Aker added: “We’re at a point now of saying that we acknowledge that there has been some ocean dumping, and a lot of this stuff came out of the federal stock system.”

Naval officials, who are working closely with the health department, have maintained for weeks that it is highly unlikely the medical wastes were dumped at sea by a Navy ship.

They acknowledged Monday, however, that an orange pill bottle bearing a last name and the words Naval Station was dumped overboard with garbage from the Vancouver earlier this month. The bottle was found on the beach of La Jolla Shores last Friday.

Navy spokesman Wildermuth said the pills were prescribed to a young sailor who has been stationed on the amphibious ship since the vessel has been on maneuvers starting Oct. 31.

On Nov. 5, the sailor threw the orange pill container into a trash can in his sleeping compartment, contrary to the commanding officer’s policy that calls for all unused medicine to be turned in to the ship’s medical department, Wildermuth said.

The sleeping compartment refuse was mixed with other common trash and thrown overboard between midnight and 4 a.m. on Nov. 6, Wildermuth said. Holes were punched in the bag to allow water to seep in and pull the garbage down to the sea floor, he said.

“At that time, the ship was more than 50 miles out to sea, south of a line running due west from La Jolla,” Wildermuth said. “The commanding officer advises that the trash that was dumped that morning was normal trash and included no medical waste.

“In accordance with Navy policy, Vancouver medical personnel do not discard medical waste at sea but retain it on board for disposal ashore,” Wildermuth said.

“Obviously, in this case, one of the holes in the bag allowed the prescription bottle, which of course is watertight, to pop out,” he said. “Because it was buoyant, like a cork, it came ashore.”

Meanwhile, county supervisors today are scheduled to consider an emergency ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor Susan Golding, that would plug a loophole in state law requiring special disposal of potentially infectious medical waste.

Currently, hospitals and other institutions generating more than 220 pounds of the potentially hazardous material a month are required to segregate the waste, burn it, or sterilize it and have it disposed of by a medical refuse contractor. Golding wants to extend those regulations to all producers of medical waste, even to those generating 220 pounds or less--typically small doctors’ offices and medical complexes.