Mug Solutions could save utility workers from injury with utility cover plug
By Sarah Payne - The Tri-City News
Published: April 30, 2009 3:00 PM
Updated: April 30, 2009 3:17 PM
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The things utility workers come across when they shimmy down a manhole into the
dark, dank bowels of a city’s underground are not pretty.
Murky water, bits of garbage, just about anything that flows down a street and can fit
into the holes of a utility cover.
Now imagine what those workers find when they pry off a manhole cover in the kind of
Downtown Eastside alley most people would avoid even in broad daylight.
The dry ones feature large, cone-shaped piles of used syringes.
In the manholes filled with a sloshing, dark brown sludge of
you-don’t-want-to-know-what the needles are floating — hundreds of them, maybe
thousands.
Drug users on their way to a needle exchange slip their used syringes down the holes
in the utility covers, hence the cone-shaped piles. So when it’s time for a Telus worker
to dip underground they get the nasty job of picking up the needles (with tongs) and
dropping them into a sharps container.
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