Safety

A Needle in the Trash: A Real Safety Wake-Up

Name: A Needle in the Trash: A Real Safety Wake-Up
Uploaded: 2025-06-16T18:57:02Z
Duration: 1 min 38 s
Description: In this powerful true story, a routine Monday trash pickup turns into a medical emergency when a needle punctures a technician’s hand. Hear what happened, what we learned, and why it’s critical to talk safety—even for the "simple stuff." This could happen to any of us.

In this powerful true story, a routine Monday trash pickup turns into a medical emergency when a needle punctures a technician’s hand. Hear what happened, what we learned, and why it’s critical to talk safety—even for the "simple stuff." This could happen to any of us.

Best Practices

Self Care

Grounds

Mark Cukro

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Transcript

If you don't mind, I'd like to share a story. I was working with a gentleman Arturo in Charlotte, North Carolina years ago, and very often on Monday morning, we go out and we pick up the trash and we throw it in the dumpster because oftentimes there'd be bags surrounding the dumpster. So we take the trash bags, we throw 'em in the dumpster, and he walks up and he pushes a bag of trash into the dumpster.

Well, a needle was in there and it punctured his hand. And he freaked out. I freaked out too. We were like, oh my goodness, what do we do? And fortunately, um, he's okay, but could you imagine just pushing a bag of trash into the dumpster and a needle punctures your hand? So, uh, we took him. To the office. Then we took him to a local medical facility.

They went through a protocol of injections and blood tests, and he's totally fine. Today. I went through the resident's trash and I found their address and I knocked on the door and I told him what happened, and the person apologized and he was diabetic, and he knows better, and he should have disposed of the needle properly, but he didn't.

It wound up in the trash. We threw the trash in the dumpster. Arturo pushed it in, and he punctured his hand and, uh. Wow, what a learning event. You know, it should have never happened, but it did. And that's kind of the point with safety is a lot of things should never happen, but they still do. Even when you're careful, accidents are going to happen.

So it's our job to reduce the likelihood of those happening and make it much less of a probability. So I hope that story can be a learning tool for you, but I would definitely share it with your team and, uh, make sure that you have things in place to take care of that if it does.