To the editor:
On the morning of Aug. 5, I was stuck by a discarded syringe while cleaning a public restroom during my shift here in Presque Isle.
I washed the wound, notified my manager, drove to Northern Light AR Gould for baseline testing for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, and filed a report with the Maine Department of Labor on Spruce Street.
I am not writing to blame anyone. Addiction is a health issue and our downtown businesses did not create it. I am writing because this is a worker safety issue.
Discarded syringes are also being found in other areas of our community — in parks, in gas station bathrooms, in trash cans. I have talked to other workers who clean those same bathrooms and they have found them, too. When you are making $18 an hour taking out trash, you should not have to worry about a needle stick that means months of testing and anxiety.
Every needlestick is an OSHA-recordable injury. Every baseline visit costs $500 or more, even before followup testing at six weeks and three months. A locked, puncture-resistant sharps box costs about $60 and a quarterly pickup by a licensed medical waste company is less than a single emergency room bill.
Portland, Bangor and Lewiston solved this years ago. They require locked sharps boxes in public restrooms and they provide a 24-hour drop kiosk downtown where syringes can be disposed of safely, no questions asked.
Aroostook County has safe disposal sites, but we don’t have visible boxes where the litter is actually happening. Last week I went to City Hall, 12 Second Street, to ask the City Council to act. I did not get a chance to speak, so I am asking here.
I am asking the City of Presque Isle to do two simple, low-cost things: add sharps containers to the public restroom safety checklist for city buildings and for businesses licensed to have public restrooms, and identify a location and funding source for a 24-hour drop kiosk downtown, using opioid settlement funds where allowable.
No one should be stuck at work for taking out the trash.
Raymond York
Presque Isle
