Medical Waste Piles Up at the Coroner’s Office Because of Unpaid Bill

A mound of trash, including more than a dozen cardboard boxes of bottles containing blood, piled up for more than a week outside the Los Angeles County coroner’s autopsy room due to a mix-up over the county’s contract with a private waste management firm.

“That’s old blood; it shouldn’t be there,” Coroner Ronald N. Kornblum, who has a reputation for running a tight ship, told a reporter before the problem was resolved shortly after noon Wednesday.

A coroner’s employee, who asked not to be named, had called a reporter earlier in the day to complain about a possible health hazard caused by the trash.

With Kornblum was Dr. Karl Harris, the coroner’s acting chief of investigations, who complained that the tipster was a disgruntled employee who may have personally placed the bottles in the parking lot to embarrass the office. The informant denied that.

The bottles of blood, said coroner’s spokeswoman Pat Smith, will be removed by another firm next Wednesday. She said the blood had been sterilized and posed no health danger. Normally, Kornblum said, the bottles would be stored in a safe area inside the coroner’s complex next to County/USC Medical Center.

Kornblum said the trash bags probably contained medical paraphernalia such as surgical gloves and hats and intravenous tubes.

The trash pickup problem was caused by the county falling behind in its payments to Oakbrook, Ill.-based Waste Management Inc., a disposal firm, said Gene Davis, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer for purchasing.

A spokesman for Waste Management, Bill Plunkett, estimated that the county is six months behind in payments and owes his firm $1,200 for its three-times-a-week pickup service.

Bill Stewart, the deputy chief administrative officer for the county’s Facilities Management Department, the unit responsible for paying Waste Management, said “we hadn’t been billed (by Waste Management), so we didn’t pay. It’s nobody’s fault. We talked to the contractor this morning and straightened it up. We always pay the bills.”