Medical Waste Returns to the Jersey Shore
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 Two syringes, intact with sharp needles, were found within feet of each other Sunday in the sands of Monmouth Beach, a quiet Jersey Shore community some 32 miles as the seagull flies from Lower Manhattan.
"This is the first time I remember it happening and I've been here 14 years," said Marianne Powers, an assistant manager of a condominium high-rise that towers over the site.
A beachgoer handed the syringes over to Powers, who then called Monmouth Beach police to have them removed.
in the 1980s and even into the 1990s, large amounts of medical waste floating just offshore in the Atlantic Ocean fouled several Jersey Shore beaches.
And as recently as three years ago, a Pennsylvania dentist looking for a cheap way to dispose of hundreds of syringes dumped them overboard from his boat, polluting the beaches of Avalon in South Jersey.