East Coast Beaches Forced to Close for Because of Medical Waste Washing Ashore

East Coast Beaches Forced to Close for Because of Medical Waste Washing Ashore

What’s going on with our East Coast?

Earlier this year, the beaches off of Massachusetts and Rhode Island dealt with fiberglass debris, thanks to a blade failure at the large Vineyard Winds offshore windfarm site.

The debris was reported as far as Rhode Island, so residents in other East Coast states are rethinking their energy priorities.

Renowned energy expert Mark Mills, with whom GSI collaborated on our most recent analysis of NJ’s Energy Master Plan, stated in May 2024: “Given that New Jersey currently obtains over 90% of all the state’s energy from hydrocarbons, 98% of vehicles on the roads use petroleum, and 85% of the state’s residential homes and commercial buildings are heated with natural gas or propane fuel … reducing those metrics to zero in just over 10 years will have enormous economic and social consequences — punishing current and future New Jerseyans who are least able to afford higher energy costs and creating disincentives for industries and businesses to locate or remain in the state.”

In our view, the turbine failure in Nantucket this summer is yet another reason for New Jersey to reconsider our accelerated “all-in” pursuit of unrealistic and untested energy sources. Instead of allowing ideology to drive our energy policy, New Jersey needs to focus on commonsense principles like reliability, affordability and sustainability.

Now, it is being reported that numerous East Coast beaches have been forced to shut down after significant amounts of medical waste washed up on shore.

Swimmers were warned to stay out of the ocean in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware – with President Joe Biden’s favorite vacation spot in Rehoboth also impacted.

‘For your safety, we advise visitors leave the beach and refrain from swimming at this time,’ the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) said in a Facebook post.

The waste has appeared as far north as Ocean City, Maryland, and as far south as Chincoteague, Virginia, near Washington.

Officials have ‘no idea where it’s coming from’ and are investigating, Ocean City Town Manager Terry McGean told WBAL.

Public health officials expressed concern about the types of waste being encountered and the range over which the waste was being spread.

Officials banned swimming, wading and surfing at Assateague State Park Sunday morning after Maryland Park Service rangers found several needles and needle caps, feminine hygiene products and cigar tips along the beach, Maryland Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Gregg Bortz said in an email.

A few more needles were found Monday, and the ban on swimming in the ocean continued at the park, he said.

There have been no reports of injuries or people encountering these items while swimming, Bortz said. The department was working with other local, state, and federal agencies to determine when it’s safe for people to enter the water.

All of Assateague Island National Seashore’s ocean-facing beaches in Maryland and Virginia were closed to swimming and wading.

Maryland’s Department of Emergency Management raised its state activation level to “partial” in support of the incident.

Multiple state and federal agencies are trying to trace the source of the medical debris. However, as of the latest reports, there is no definitive information about where the waste originates. Agencies like the Coast Guard, NOAA, and FEMA, alongside state environmental departments, are part of this effort.

Interestingly, this event hearkens back to the “syringe tides” of the 1980’s, which was the underlying reason for the passage of the Ocean Dumping Ban Act and Medical Waste Tracking Act.

Early in the summer of 1987, a few stray plastic syringes washed ashore on the New Jersey coastline. Within weeks, hundreds and then thousands followed, leading to the closure of a 50-mile stretch of beaches during peak tourist season.

Just a few decades earlier, these syringes would have been reusable glass-and-steel devices sterilized between uses. But with the marketing of plastic syringes in the 1960s and an explosion of demand for single-use medical plastics in the 1970s, the single-use syringe had become the most visible form of medical waste by the late 1980s, now swelling the landfills of New York City and occasionally making the short ocean migration to the Jersey Shore.

As newspapers and TV news made these syringe tides into media events, the initial promise that disposable devices would protect people from contamination was inverted, and used needles on the shore now threatened to infect passing beachgoers with hepatitis and AIDS.

The crisis of the syringe tides would lead to a series of House-Senate hearings, the 1988 passage of the Ocean Dumping Ban Act and Medical Waste Tracking Act, and new federal definitions of “medical waste” as a legal category.

Hopefully, the reason for the massive waste wash-up will be determined and the situation resolved without the imposition of even more bureaucratic rules that apparently failed here.

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