Health department offering thermometer exchange
http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1171717202/3

By JAMES AMOS
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

If you’ve got mercury thermometers, old medications or used hypodermic needles, the Pueblo City-County Health Department has a way to help you get rid of them.

The health department offers disposal services for both the thermometers and the needles, and it can help you get rid of the unused or outdated medications in a way that won’t hurt people or the environment.

All three services have been offered by the Pueblo health department for a while, according to Katie Davis, a microbiologist at the department’s laboratory.

But people still call the department to ask what they should do, she said.

Mercury thermometers can be brought to the health department itself and exchanged for free digital thermometers, which don’t have mercury in them.

Health department spokeswoman Sarah Bruestle said mercury thermometers can break open and spill mercury. Mercury vapor is very hazardous to humans, especially children.

Mercury is the shiny silver liquid metal in older thermometers, as well as thermostats, motion switches and some other devices.

Thermometers with a red liquid inside - which is alcohol - are safe to keep and use, she said.

The health department collected about 400 mercury thermometers last year, Davis said. The thermometers are sent to a company that breaks them open and recycles the mercury.

People also call the health department to ask what they should do if they spill mercury, Bruestle said.

Because mercury vapor is toxic, Bruestle said you should open a window to get air circulating. Then gather up the mercury in paper towels or something else and put it inside a re-sealable plastic bag, and put that inside another re-sealable bag. The health department will dispose of the mercury for you, Bruestle said, or you can keep it to turn in at the department’s household hazardous materials clean-up day in May 2008.

Getting rid of used hypodermic needles properly is important because the needles can poke garbage workers and infect them, or just scare them.

The health department has two options for diabetics, cancer patients and other who regularly use syringes.

You can buy a "sharps" container from the department for $8 or $15, she said, fill it and return it to the health department for proper disposal. The purchase price includes the cost of disposal.

Or the health department can point you to several companies that offer the same sort or service, or which sell needle "disintegration" machines that use a short plasma arch to melt the needle into a clump.

Syringe users once were told just to toss their used needles in detergent bottles or other heavy plastic containers.

But Bruestle said trash is compacted now and the bottles can break open, spilling the needles out and putting trash workers at risk.

The health department doesn’t dispose of old or unused medications, Davis said. But it can help people get rid of them in a safe way.

If a person can, they should keep their old medications and bring them to the clean-up day in May 2008, she said.

But if someone wants to get rid of their old medications sooner, they can throw them away after they’ve taken any patient’s name off the bottle and made sure no one will get the medications before the trash workers come.

The department used to tell people to flush unused or outdated medications down the toilet, Davis said.

But a city’s sewage treatment plant isn’t designed to remove pharmaceutical chemicals, so they can hurt the environment, she said.

Bruestle said one study showed the fish below Front Range sewage treatment plants were all hermaphrodites, having both male and female sexual tissues. That shows that residual chemicals in water from treatment plants - in this case certain hormones - can cause problems for aquatic life.

Also, flushing antibiotics can make germs in the outside world more resistant to antibiotics, she said.

So Davis said people should take their names off the medication bottle and try to make the medication as unpalatable as possible so no one will ingest it later.

Sawdust or cat litter can be added to liquid medications, she said. Solid medications can be mixed with cayenne pepper sauce or anything else nontoxic to make them inedible.

Chemotherapy drugs shouldn’t be thrown away at all, according to Davis, because they are toxic. They should be returned to the patient’s hospital.

The digital thermometer exchange will be held only as long as the health department’s supplies last, Davis said, but "it’s not like we only have six of them. We have a lot."

For more information, call the health department’s lab at 583-4318.