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Aug 25, 2008 9:00 pm US/Eastern
Avalon Shore Deemed Safe Since Medical Waste Find
AVALON, NJ (CBS3/AP) ―
High tide brought a fresh mystery and an old problem to New Jersey over the weekend when medical materials washed ashore on a beach.
Between 100 and 200 needles of the type used for IVs, along with cotton swabs and pill casings, were found Saturday and Sunday in Avalon. The discovery prompted the tiny community about 27 miles southwest of Atlantic City to close stretches of its beach on two days on a busy summer weekend.
Avalon spokesman Scott Wahl said beaches were checked after high tide Monday morning, declared debris-free and allowed to reopen.
Wahl said another search for medical products was planned after high tide Monday evening.
Wahl said the quick beach closures show the town, which was named last week by National Geographic Adventure magazine as one of the 50 best places in the nation to live and play, cares about environmental safety.
"Avalon is truly a victim here," Wahl said. "The mayor wants immediate and aggressive action."
The environmental enforcement arm of the state Attorney General's Office is looking into the source of the waste, said Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for the office.
Twenty years ago, medical waste on the shore became a huge problem for New Jersey -- a state whose image to some outsiders wasn't exactly pristine to begin with.
Thousands of beach-going days were lost in 1987 and 1988 because waste was found. The problem even made it into the Billy Joel song, "We Didn't Start the Fire," in which the Piano Man laments, "hypodermics on the shore."
Environmentalists say that after the epidemic of the late 1980s, a ban on dumping trash off the coast on New Jersey largely solved the problem.
There's still an occasional wash-up, according to Jeff Tittel, who runs the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.
For instance, medical products were found on Ocean County beaches in July 2003 and in both Ocean and Monmouth Counties last September.
"It's not usually deliberate dumping," Tittel said. "It tends to be accidental."
He said the problem might be solved if there was a requirement that trash be shipped in steel containers rather than on barges with only mesh to keep debris from falling overboard.
John Weber, Northeast regional manager for the Surfrider Foundation, said he hopes authorities can pinpoint the source of the Avalon waste because needles are now required to have serial numbers.
"We've come a long way," on cleaning beaches, Weber said, "and what's really key is, we can't go back."
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
