SF hospital dumps illegal medical waste

SANTA FE (KRQE) - Santa Fe’s only hospital is having trouble sticking to the rules when it comes to disposing of hazardous waste.

Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center has paid about $65,000 in fines to the state Environment Department since 2007 for dumping medical waste, such as bloody syringes, at the Caja Del Rio landfill in Santa Fe.

Now, News 13 learned, it has happened again.

“They had an incident in 2006, 2007, this (September 2010) incident and we’ve also just had another one in March,” said Auralie Ashley-Marx, director of the Environment Department’s Solid Waste Bureau.

In the latest incident workers at Caja Del Rio found a used syringe in trash from the hospital. The Solid Waste Bureau mailed out a fine of $2,025 last week for the needle.

The bureau decided not to fine the hospital for the 2006 incident. However, St. Vincent paid a fine of $43,500 for illegal medical waste being dumped at the landfill in 2007 and another $21,400 when the same thing happened in September 2010.

The 2010 incident included bloody syringes, used urine cups, blood-stained gauze, used gowns and contaminated surgical tubing being deposited at Caja Del Rio, Ashley-Marx said.

Operators at Caja Del Rio found all of the waste during random load inspections, she said.

Medical waste, by law, must be treated at a special facility before it is thrown into a landfill.

“They contract with an infectious-waste hauler, and it’s taken to a treatment facility to take care of the pathogens,” Ashley-Marx said.

St. Vincent Chief Executive Officer Alex Valdez blamed the problems on staff turnover and mistakes.

“At times, on occasion, as you’ve just indicated, I say due to human error, we find that what should have been red-bagged was not or a red bag of bio ends up at the municipal dump site, and that is terribly unfortunate,” Valdez said.

He said the hospital holds training sessions about disposing of biomedical waste with staff four to six times a year. In addition, hospital staff go through the trash before it is taken away, Valdez said.

But while it’s not uncommon for hospitals across the state to accidentally dump medical waste in regular landfills, St. Vincent’s track record is above the average, Ashley-Marx said.

“They’ve had more violations than some of the others,” she said. “It’s more than average.”