Navy Team Joins Medical Waste Inquiry

The Navy on Thursday formed a special two-member response team to help San Diego County health officials identify the source of medical wastes that have been washing up on beaches from Imperial Beach to Carlsbad over the past three weeks.

The team consists of a medical officer and a military supply officer and will help local health officials identify and try to trace the wastes that have been deposited on the beaches at high tide, said Cmdr. Ron Wildermuth, a Navy spokesman in San Diego.

In addition, Navy officials are checking a report that people aboard a gray cargo ship were seen throwing bags overboard somewhere between San Clemente and San Diego on the afternoon of Nov. 4, Wildermuth said.

Wildermuth said the Navy will be searching its records to find which ships were in the area on that date, and will be questioning the crews about any dumping into the ocean, a practice that military regulations prohibit less than 50 miles offshore.

Tip on Dumping Is Latest Lead

The tip about the dumping incident--given to health officials by an airplane pilot who flies as a “spotter” for local tuna fishermen--is the latest lead authorities have in their search for the source of an unprecedented wave of solid medical wastes. The wastes have plagued San Diego’s shores since Oct. 29, when a vial of blood, a syringe with attached needle and a patient’s wristband were discovered at Black’s Beach.

So far, Navy and health officials have traced three intravenous bags found earlier this week to a military supply depot in Tracy, Calif. But they say they won’t be able to tell which branch of the military, or which military contractor, ultimately ordered those supplies.

A bag of oxalic acid, found Monday, also bore a 12-digit federal stock number. Naval authorities confirmed that the substance is stocked on only one ship--the Missouri--for cleaning teakwood decking, but the vessel has been stationed 200 to 400 miles out to sea except for a brief docking in Long Beach.

On Thursday, the Naval Base received a message from the Missouri about the chemical, Wildermuth said. “They went back and inventoried all of their empty and full bottles for the last three months, and they are not missing any,” he said, describing the procedure as very unusual.

Meanwhile Thursday, health officials received reports that additional medical wastes were washed up on beaches at Del Mar and Carlsbad. And health officials were checking a report that a local attorney found a mile-long swath of surgical gowns, masks and other debris when he was fishing off the coast of Point Loma on Nov. 6.

Patches of Waste

The attorney told the health department that he saw the mile-long patch of medical waste at 10 a.m. about 45 miles offshore. He saw another quarter-mile-square patch of refuse later that afternoon about 32 miles offshore, said Larry Aker, assistant deputy director of the county’s Environmental Health Services Department.

Aker, who declined to identify the attorney, said the health department has asked the U.S. Coast Guard to help find the medical wastes. But he added that the chances are slim that the material has stayed together since it was first spied by the attorney.

“We’re talking about material that was seen on the 6th, and we’ve had three minor storms,” Aker said. “I’m trying to talk to people who are fishermen to see how long the material would stay afloat.”

Such a large patch of medical wastes has health officials thinking now that the surgical clothing, at least, was dumped in the ocean for “economic reasons,” Aker said.

“The suspicion is that it is a commercial kind of dumping,” Aker said. “Whether it is a small operator who is picking this stuff up and is taking it out, whether it is a hospital, whether it is a contractor who is in trouble--you can speculate on different sides of this one.

Orange County Investigation

“It still doesn’t really make sense to us that any large-scale producer of medical wastes would take it out in the ocean and dump it,” Aker added.

While San Diego health officials were working with the Navy, their counterparts in Orange County on Thursday were investigating legal avenues for prosecuting the Navy or its contractors for allegedly dumping vials of antiseptic used in biological warfare on Orange County beaches.

Since Monday, the Orange County coastline stretching from Seal Beach to San Clemente has been littered with an assortment of waste materials, including 70 plastic vials of the antiseptic and 20 vials containing an injectable solution used to treat shock.

There have also been 12 vials of protopam chloride, an injectable chemical used to counteract organic phosphorus; several vials of military-issue tetracycline; a military-issue waterproof flashlight; and a container of aircraft cleaning compound.

Also found was the plastic cover of a technical manual stamped Department of the Navy Sea Systems Command and marked “Peculiar Support Equipment for CIWS MK 15 (PHALANX).”

Trying to Initiate Enforcement

“We’re trying to see if we can initiate enforcement action,” said John J. Hills, a hazardous-materials expert for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“The message that we want to send out to everyone, whether it be the military or any other business, is that wastes such as these should be disposed of properly,” he said. “No one in Orange County should be subjected to having these wastes showing up either in a vacant lot or on the beach. The message is ‘first, let’s get these wastes cleaned up.’ And the second message is, ‘we don’t want this to happen again.’ ”

Navy spokesmen in San Diego continue to maintain that the vials probably are Defense Department materials, but could have been dumped by a number of military agencies or contractors and not necessarily by a Navy ship.

Also Thursday, a Navy team from Long Beach requested samples of the vials so it can try to trace their source through the military supply system, according to Wildermuth.

Times staff writer Lanie Jones contributed to this story.