DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Sable Maltese, 5, and her brother Amani Senegal, 7, played in an illegal dump site yesterday near their Waipahu home. Their older brother, Trendon Amuzie, was poked with a syringe that Sable found in the dump.
Medical waste
dumped in WaipahuA boy accidentally pricks
his finger with an injector
containing an anti-nerve agent
State health officials combed a Waipahu stream yesterday after a 12-year-old boy accidentally stuck himself with a military drug injector officials believe was illegally dumped.
Trendon Amuzie said he was about to lift weights outside his Awanei Street home Monday when his 5-year-old sister brought him a thin green tube that said "Atropine" on it.
Atropine is an anti-nerve agent that soldiers inject into themselves if they are poisoned with nerve gas in battle.
"I took it from her, and I didn't know what I was doing, and all of a sudden, a needle came out and stuck me," Trendon said as he pointed to a red dot on his thumb where the needle had penetrated his skin.
Trendon's stepfather, Walter Senegal, immediately took him to St. Francis Medical Center-West, where doctors told him that such an injection could have been lethal to young children.
"I was very concerned because my daughter is only 5, and this needle could have killed her," Senegal said. The only effect Trendon felt was several hours of numbness in his hand, he said.
The fatality rate in cases of atropine poisoning is less than 1 percent, according to a state Department of Health fact sheet.
Trendon's sister, Sable Maltese, found the injector in their back yard, which is about 20 feet from a stream which has become a dump site for trash.
Officials searched the stream for other hazardous materials and found several more atropine kits, said Ed Gomes, on-scene coordinator for the Department of Health.
Atropine injectors are available mainly to those in the military but might also be purchased over the Internet, he said.
Neither the department nor military knows how the kits arrived at the dump site.
"These anti-nerve agents should be found only on the battlefield or on base," said Army National Guard Sgt. John Andoe, adding that he had "no clue how the needles ended up in a residential area."
Gomes said a resident in the area reported that he had found a box of about 50 atropine injectors a month ago and had thrown them away. Officials will continue to search for hazardous materials today, he said, adding that the serial numbers on the atropine injectors could help determine where the kits came from.
In addition to the several atropine injectors, more than 30 syringes and other medical waste were also found during the cleanup, Gomes said.
Keith Kawaoka, environmental manger for the Health Department, is asking anyone who finds an atropine injector to call the Health Department at 586-4249.
The department will oversee the immediate emergency cleanup, but it is up to the property owner, the city and county, to do further cleanup, Kawaoka said.
