Medical Waste Unearthed at Facility for the Disabled : Health: The owner of the property has been ordered to have the back yard soil tested for contamination by Feb. 9.

State officials have closed down a Los Feliz board-and-care home for the mentally disabled after residents planting a garden in the back yard unearthed medical waste, including vials of human blood, needles, syringes, lab slides and culture plates.

County health investigators are seeking criminal charges against the owner of the house, Librada Del Mundo, 60, a dentist, who operated a medical laboratory in the duplex for two years during the mid-1980s before turning the building into a six-bedroom board-and-care facility.

A health investigator from the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Hazardous Waste Control Program said he was called to the house on Dec. 23 and found several residents walking barefoot in the back yard amid the refuse.

Investigator Marty Kasman said that the home--at 1404 N. Alexandria Ave. in the middle of a residential neighborhood--was declared uninhabitable the next day. Kasman also ordered Del Mundo to perform a site assessment--to see if the soil is contaminated--by Feb. 9.

Several days later, the state Department of Social Services revoked the license and reassigned the residents to other facilities.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office is considering whether to file misdemeanor criminal charges against Del Mundo for illegal disposal of medical waste.

Deputy City Atty. Vince Sato said he had not determined which law could be used as a basis for charges.

“What makes this particularly egregious is that she turned around and opened a board-and-care home for the mentally disabled, knowing full well that there was medical waste there,” Kasman said.

But Del Mundo’s attorney, Matthew C. Long, said his client had no idea that laboratory items were buried on her property when she gave her brother permission to open the board-and-care home there.

The facility was licensed by the state on Feb. 5, 1991.

Long confirmed that Del Mundo ran a medical laboratory in the house at one time, but he said that there were “proper methods in place for disposal of medical waste through legal, authorized means.”

As for the waste buried in the back yard, Long said, “we don’t know who did it, when it was done or how it was done.”

Ely Enriquez, Del Mundo’s brother-in-law, who supervised the residents, said that Del Mundo told him she suspects former lab employees might have buried the supplies on the property out of laziness.

Most of the medical waste has now been removed from the property and saved as evidence. Kasman said that there is no danger to neighborhood residents if they keep off the property.

But he said that the soil--which has not been tested--could be contaminated with infectious diseases, such as hepatitis.

Despite large yellow signs posted in the window warning, “Danger--Keep Out,” Enriquez and his wife are still living at the home. Kasman said that the Enriquezes have been warned of the risk and have elected to stay.