Elmhurst Decorating Tip: Yes You Can Reuse That I.V. Tubing!

I spotted this on 75th Street. Yes, tis used I.V. tubing that some artistic soul thought would look nice draped around a fence in front of someone's house.

The yellow of the shredded alert tag adds a burst of color too!

We're only a few blocks from the hospital, so I'm actually surprised that I don't see more of this (i.e., home decor using medical waste).

The Weekend Sweep (September 27-28, 2014)

Thankfully there were no incidents of dumping on my lil stretch o' land this past weekend. There was plenty of litter to contend with though: I did a pick-up on both Saturday and Sunday (even though I picked up every piece of litter I could find on Saturday, by Sunday afternoon 43rd Ave, 74th Street, and Woodside Avenue were full of debris again).

 

Most of the litter I encountered consisted of the usual booze bottles and plain white styrofoam takeout containers. But I did find an interesting item for my medical waste collection* (*this is a PHOTO collection; I throw out the items after photographing 'em). I found the item pictured below on 43rd Avenue. I looked it up on the BD vacutainer chart. This light-blue-topped vacutainer contains sodium citrate and is used for coagulation studies. This one doesn't appear to have been used--at least, no blood was visible to my naked eyeball. But it's just gross to find such an item on the street.

 

BD Vacutainer, found on 43rd Avenue between 72nd and 74th Streets on Saturday, 9/27/14

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AND, what neighborhood clean-up would be complete without the discovery of drug baggies? I found all three of these babes in a single patch of sidewalk grass, on 43rd Avenue close to 74th Street. I also found a snuff jar (I found another snuff jar, same brand, the following day). As far as I know snuff is legal; after all, it's tobacco, no?- so if cigs are legal I'd think that snuff would be, but I'm really not sure so if anyone knows, please drop me a line.

Three drug baggies and jar of snuff, found on 43rd Avenue near 74th Street on 9/27/14



Morning Walks...and Medical Waste!

For the past few days, I have been taking a shopping bag (regular plastic bag that you get from the grocery store) with me when I leave for work. In the 2.5-block walk to the train station, I manage to pick up so much litter that the bag is soon overflowing; usually it is full before I even make it to block #3. I don't know what exactly goes down on 74th Street at night, but I can surmise from the litter that it involves the consumption of many airplane-sized bottles o'booze, cigarillos, and take-out food that comes in plain white Styrofoam containers.

I assume that people who pass me on the street think I'm a nutjob. Maybe when I do this on the weekends and I am wearing a dirty tee shirt and jeans they assume that I am picking up garbage as some kind of work release/court-mandated job. But when I'm dressed for work and reaching down every two feet to retrieve another item of filth, it must make people wonder. It certainly makes them swerve a few feet out of their way to avoid me. However, this morning a woman actually said in passing,"That is very nice of you." It made my heart sing. It made everything...groovy (sorry, just got that song in my head). Seriously though, I really appreciate it when neighbors say thank you! Makes me feel like other people are actually benefiting from my garbage-collecting obsession.

On another note: I have to start a photographic chronicle of the medical waste I find on 43rd and 74th. Elmhurst Hospital is a few blocks away. At least some of the medical waste I find in the streets must be from people who left AMA, because it's the kind of stuff that folks normally wouldn't walk out with. Here is a list of some of the medical goodies I've come across:

*ECG pads (I've come across many of these, both in the gutters of 43rd and also along 74th Street)
*Hospital "footies" (the socks with treads on the bottom that are worn by hospital patients). I found a dirty/well-worn hospital sock on 43rd a couple weeks ago-- looked like someone had been wearing it as his or her sole foot protection (no pun intended) to walk the sidewalks and streets.
*Elmhurst patient wristband.
*Insulin needles. Okay, so these could have been left by a non-hospital patient/outpatient diabetic. I found these twice in front of my house. At least the person was considerate enough to recap them before tossing.
*Bandages of all kinds and sizes (adhesive strips, gauze, some with blood/pus/serosanguinous residue, yum!).