![]() Spare a moment of quiet gratitude that it's not you. You've heard the phrase "It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it"? Well, this is the dirtiest job, and these folks are the somebodies. When I get my yearly physical, I always get checked for HIV, Hepatitis, and syphilis - the three major risks that are checked when one gets exposed." I personally have been stuck by a needle and had to go through one year of blood testing. Two friends who lived on the East Coast both died from illnesses related to the industry. I can tell you a bio company owner here in Arizona told me he had cut himself on a crime scene cleanup and was very sick. "Due to confidentiality, I can't give you specific details in regards to deaths. Dale warns of the consequences of not catching a needle before it catches you. Remember to catch with your legs, not your back."Įspecially hazardous are all the needles and syringes technicians often find lying around. "I'm just gonna push this out the window. No offense to women - they can do a lot of what we can do and most really pull their weight - but it gets difficult when you have to move a king-sized mattress soaked with fluids from a third-floor apartment down to ground level with no elevator." A lot of people call wanting to get in the business. She went on a motorcycle call, and she didn't see the body, most of it was cleaned up, but she was done. I had a girl who trained online, who really looked into it and really thought she wanted to do it. Unless you get a face-to-face class, I think you're asking for trouble. It might work for re-certification, but not to get you prepared for anything. Problem is, they have no idea of what they are getting themselves into. Dale frequently receives calls from people interested in busting into the lucrative cleanup business. Maybe you could start today, but as enticing as cleaning up former people might sound, perhaps you should reconsider. Hint hint, "It's too hot for a helmet" guy. I can pick up a victim's brains, and that's not considered medical waste because it's not generated in a medical facility. But a motorcycle accident doesn't count as medical waste. A tissue sample, a speck on a glass slide you can barely see that's 20 years old, would have to be incinerated. Syringes may contain diseases like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV). When I pick up syringes from a doctor's office, that's for autoclave, which means they'll high-pressure steam it. Incinerated waste is generated in a medical facility. There's autoclave and there's incineration. ![]() "There are two different kinds of medical waste disposal. Likely some profanity, too.Īnother possible assignment is medical pickup, in which technicians will retrieve used materials from a hospital or doctor's office and transport it to a lab for autoclaving. ![]() We're sure that Magic Marker-ing up Ebola was indeed "a new experience" - though we'd use a few more adjectives to describe it. "If you saw that room five hours ago, you'd know better than to stand in that spot."Īpparently, you need a certain stoic sensibility to do these jobs. It was a new and strange experience to see jobs I was working on in the news." Really, any job that was a potential biohazard. We also cleaned up after some highly contagious diseases, mostly bloodborne pathogens. Some of the other jobs we did were cleaning up 'hobo camps' and cleaning up the houses or apartments of hoarders, usually at the request of the family or landlord, and occasionally the county. Our job was to sanitize any holding cell or squad car that they may have had someone bleed or vomit in. "Our company provided a service, free of charge, for any police station that contacted us. Dale Cillian is a biohazard cleaning technician whose duties include "Responding to crime scenes, deaths, accidents, hoarding and extreme cleanup situations." Similarly, Jayce LeBlanc's list of assignments is much broader than what you'll see in a typical CSI episode. Crime scene cleaners don't just pull teeth out of walls for a living. ![]()
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