Yahoo Answers is not something that I recommend, though no doubt it has its uses and many people find it particularly useful. When I’m teaching, I instruct students in no uncertain terms that written work drawn from Yahoo Answers or from Wikipedia score zero marks – it’s lazy and of a poor is non-existent standard – and may irritate me sufficiently to impact on future marks!
But Yahoo Answers does have a following, and today I visited it for the first time ever. The item that caught my eye was a question, posed by someone from the South West, that I will reproduce in full here:
How to address a carer burning clinical waste in the garden?
Our elderly neighbour needs round the clock care, we’ve never had an issue with him or his carers until recently the drains in the street became blocked. When the water board (I’m in the UK btw) came to investigate they found empty medical packets, bits of needle and clinical waste down them. I believe they must have warned them of this, however here’s the problem.
Since this the carer has begun burning something next to the party fence which is causing a foul smelling smoke. We came home the other day having left a window in my bedroom open to find large quantities of smoke wafting over the fence and in through the windows causing the house to smell of a sweetish but choking stink. While going to close the windows I noticed her empty a yellow sharps bin into the fire as well.
My understanding is that clinical waste should be collected for a fee by the council, however it appears they don’t want to pay this. Anyone got any ideas who the best people to contact are? I have tried addressing the issue with the carers but seems to have got no where.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130421092917AAzF04C
The answer might be simple and straightforward, to contact the Local Authority and put it in their hands. That’s what I would suggest, but will they act, and act in a way that is appropriate? That requires more than a bullying or threatening letter, or a visit from a Civil Enforcement Officer dropping heavy hints of penalty notices and/or court action.
Some education is necessary, but also practical assistance. If large volumes of clinical waste are being produced, what arrangements can be put in place to make sure that it is being collected for proper disposal? Who is providing treatment to the neighbour, who didn’t make proper arrangements in the first place? They too need ‘training’ and perhaps enforcement action. What about the welfare of those unblocking drains, that might include needles and other sharps plus a whole lot of hazardous material? There is also burned, but perhaps incompletely burned wastes in the garden that need to be dealt with.
It’s a perhaps straightforward question that had been posed, and one that invites an easy answer, to direct the complainant to the Local Authority who may well then stamp their foot and go down the route of enforcement. But that is not a solution. The situation is complex and suggests errors by a number of professionals who have left a patient, a neighbour, in a situation whereby they dispose these wastes improperly. That root cause suggests serious and possibly widespread failures – if one patient is let down in this was, presumably there are others – that needs more than the heavy and impersonal hand of enforcement.
What would you do?