news release
ANDREW J. SPANO, Westchester County Executive SUSAN TOLCHIN, Director of Communications

CONTACT: SUSAN TOLCHIN (914) 995-2932

WASI TALIB (914) 995-6355

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 25, 2005

WESTCHESTER COUNTY DEALS WITH RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS FOUND IN GARBAGE

Westchester County is taking steps to address a growing public health concern of radioactive materials found in household garbage that is costing taxpayers more and more money each year.

Almost all radioactivity detected in trash this year comes from soiled personal products used by patients who received radioactive treatment in the hospital or on an outpatient basis. These products include soiled tissue paper, sanitary napkins, adult diapers and other products used to absorb body fluids that are still radioactive.

With hospitals and doctors now able to perform treatments on an outpatient basis or release hospital patients earlier than previously, the number of radioactive materials detected in garbage have risen: 7 in 2003, 10 last year and already 11 so far this year. At a cost of up to $5,000 for decontamination at each incident, municipal governments have had to bear the extra burden and the county has decided to step up efforts to address the problem.

Under the direction of County Executive Andy Spano, four Westchester County departments – Communications, Environmental Facilities, Health and Public Safety – have taken a collaborative approach to addressing this problem from an education, prevention, detection and enforcement perspective.

With funding from Environmental Facilities, all four departments began developing early this year an educational and waste management program. They teamed up with the nearly 60 Westchester physicians and veterinarians who use radioactive materials to treat patients to help solve the problem.

Materials were prepared for a new "Don't Contaminate - Keep 'til the Safe Date" preventive education program that included Personal Disposal Kits for physicians to provide to each patient receiving radioactive treatment. Each treating physician or veterinarian was mailed ten of these kits as well as instructional brochures for their patients. The kits contain specially labeled disposal bags that would be marked by the treating facility with their patient’s specific “safe” date – the date determined by the treatment provider when the patients’ body fluids are no longer mildly radioactive. The date varies for each patient depending on the type of radioactive material used and the dose of treatment given. The mailing also provided supportive materials for the physician’s office such as countertop signs, brochures, brochure holders and instructions on how to order additional materials.

After each treatment, physicians inform patients that their bodily fluids will be mildly radioactive for a specified number of days. With the county’s new program, patients will be asked to put tissues, disposable bed pads, and sanitary waste into a specially labeled disposal bag provided in the Personal Disposal Kit and keep the bag in their homes until the "safe date" has been reached. After that date, it is "safe" to dispose of the bag in the household trash.

For patients unable to keep the sealed disposal bag at home, physicians and veterinarians contacted have agreed to allow their patients to return these bags in their facilities where they would store and maintain them until the radioactive material is deemed safe for disposal.

Similar mailings have also been sent to Westchester hospitals as well as several neighboring hospitals in Connecticut, the Bronx and Manhattan, which treats Westchester residents with radioactive materials. Follow-up contact with all health professionals and facilities are being conducted this month by the Health Department staff to provide additional support, information and additional materials. Response to these initial mailings has been positive. In Westchester, several hospitals including St. Joseph’s Hospital, St John’s Riverside Hospital, Westchester Medical Center and White Plains Hospital Center have already asked for additional materials.

The disposal methods recommended by the county allow the waste to be handled safely and kept from coming in contact with truck drivers, transported through the community or entering the environment before it is safe. Radioactive waste is prohibited from being burned at the county’s Resource Recovery facility at Charles Point, Peekskill where radiation detection monitors have been installed since the facility opened in the 1980s. To reduce the occurrence of radioactive waste entering the facility, monitors were installed at the three county transfer stations in 2000; contaminated waste incidents at the Charles Point facility have decreased from about four times a year then to one incident a year.

With better detection at the transfer stations, the responsibility for decontaminating local sanitation trucks have fallen on the shoulders of local municipal governments such as Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, Ardsley and New Rochelle. Local municipal sanitation trucks entering the county’s three transfer stations – in White Plains, Mt. Vernon and Yonkers – and which set off radiation detection monitors are detained for decontamination. Each radiation incident costs the responsible municipality up to $5,000 to clean up and diverts the sanitation equipment from regular service. Officials from the county’s Public Safety and Health Departments work with municipal officials to investigate the source of contamination, enforce local laws and take action to detect such incidents. All incidents are initially treated as criminal cases as federal and state law prohibits commercial or medical facilities from disposing medical waste in residential garbage containers.

Additional radiation detection monitors have been added to the truck entries of the three county transfer stations. Existing monitors have been checked and re-set for calibration according to specified standards and warning systems have since been installed. Municipal authorities have expressed interest in purchasing and installing on-truck detection systems costing about $1,800 each that would allow radioactive materials to be identified at patients’ homes before they are picked up, preventing even more costly decontamination later on.

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