By Blair Thomas, New Era Staff Writer
A big part of George Hampton’s job is finding solutions to the community’s problems with trash.
“A lot of times, we respond to a call and we don’t have a lot of information,” said Hampton, a route supervisor for Hopkinsville Solid Waste Authority. “It’s not just about picking up the trash, we have to figure out what the complaint is about and how we can solve the problem.”
That was the case Monday morning when Hampton arrived on Henderson Drive.
Hopkinsville sanitation workers received an anonymous call reporting a mattress, possibly covered in blood, that had been set on a curb outside of a home.
“This was an area of concern for us because blood is considered a biohazard and not only can our trash trucks not pick it up, but it could be dangerous for people in the community,” Hampton said.
That was the concern of the anonymous caller, Hampton said, who said children in the neighborhood could start to play on the mattress and come into contact with the dried blood that might have diseases.
Hampton and the sanitation workers had other concerns. The mattress was from the home where Jason Morris, 37, was found dead last month. The county coroner’s office had determined Morris’ cause of death to be exsanguination, or death as a result of blood loss.
The preliminary autopsy report indicated Morris may have died from self-inflicted stab wounds.
Because there was blood on the mattress, sanitation workers couldn’t haul it off with the rest of the trash.
“It raises a question for us about where we take it from here,” Hampton said. “Someone has to clean up messes like these and we can’t do it.”
Hopkinsville Sanitation cannot pick up any biologically hazardous materials – including blood – from the side of the road, said Solid Waste Superintendent Bill Bailey. In cases like the one on Henderson Drive, Bailey said he has to find someone else who can take care of it.
“We call around to other landfills to see if they will take the mattress,” Bailey said. “Sometimes we can process and wrap it in plastic and dispose of it that way. But other times we have to contact a company that deals with disposing of medical waste.”
Stericycle is a national company that specializes in medical waste disposal. The company incinerates more than 90 percent of all medical waste including pathological materials like blood, according to a company spokesman. Other methods of disposal include thermal treatment, steam sterilization and chemical treatments.
“It is important to dispose of all medical waste, especially waste that comes from the body, so as not to spread diseases,” said Charlotte Write, a spokeswoman for Stericycle.
Hepatitis B and C can live outside of the body for a couple of weeks, meaning the diseases could be found in dried blood, according to a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The HIV virus can only survive outside of the body for a couple of hours and drying the blood infected with HIV reduces by more than 90 percent the chance it will live, the CDC spokesman said.
When crime scenes are cleaned, disposing of waste and sterilizing the area is important to reduce diseases, Write said.
Companies that specialize in crime scene clean up including Apex Bio-Clean, KC Environmental, Xtreme Resolutions, Bio-Trauma 911 and A.C.T. Remediation Services, are hired by the families of the victims to make sure the area is property sterilized.
Hopkinsville Police Chief Guy Howie said the families must clean up the scene of a murder or suicide or pay to have it done.
“It doesn’t sound very friendly, I know, but that’s just how it has to be handled,” Howie said.
On Henderson Drive, whoever was cleaning up the property just wasn’t handling the scene right, Hampton said.
“Someone has to clean it up and someone has to dispose of all of this, it’s just a matter of figuring out who,” Hampton said. “It’s amazing that just one mattress on a curb can raise so many questions.”
On Tuesday morning, the mattress was gone from Henderson Drive, but Bailey said it wasn’t taken by Hopkinsville Sanitation. He was still waiting to hear back from a landfill in Ohio County to see if it could be disposed of there.
Bailey said he was concerned about the whereabouts of the mattress because getting it off the curb and finding somewhere to put it wasn’t the only issue. It had to be properly sterilized and disposed of.
“We can’t just stick it in our landfill and be done with it,” Bailey said. “Whether it’s on that curb or not, it’s still hazardous material.”
BLAIR THOMAS can be reached at 270-887-3231 or bthomas@kentuckynewera.com
