For the second time this summer syringes and medical waste have washed up on some New Jersey beaches.
Cindy Zipf, the executive director of Clean Ocean Action, says syringes that are tossed away many miles from the beach are washed into the ocean by heavy rains that storm drains and sewer systems can’t handle.
“We will see more of this unless we address the problems and it’s not acceptable. There are solutions. We need to have the political will to fix storm systems, but they also have to get people to understand that these materials are not disposable down the drains or in the streets. They have to be managed very carefully.”
New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff TIttel says there are ways to fix the medical waste problem.
“You can build holding tanks to hold the water back and then treat it later after the rains. You can build a separate system to separate storm water from sewage, but it costs money. We don’t have a lot of political will to fix the environment right now.”
Towns where the syringes were found raked and cleaned the beaches to remove the medical waste.