The scariest things ever found in the trash

October 30th, 2008 by Andy Mayer

In the spirit of Halloween, recycle.co.uk delves into the darker side of our bins to investigate the scariest things that have been found in the trash…

The scariest thing a person might find in the trash could totally depend on your perspective. For example, say you are a single man and you have been dating for a few months. You go visit your girlfriend one evening. While you are there you use the restroom and happen to notice a pregnancy test kit box in the trashcan. This alone could send some guys running for the hills.

There are other scary things that might be found in the trash that are much more serious than the possibility of a baby. Some can cause a real risk to individuals. These could range from simple broken glass protruding from the bag or might include things like used syringes. These would always have been scary but now with so many fatal diseases that are passed through blood, an accidental stick from a tainted syringe could prove fatal. Most reputable institutions discard syringes in a responsible manner, however any syringe found in the trash should be handled with extreme caution.

Reaching into a bin and grabbing a syringe - there isn’t anything more scarey

Because there are so many hazardous and scary things being found in the trash on a more regular basis, major cities have environmental police that monitor the possibility of dangerous or hazardous materials that might be improperly disposed of with normal trash. Garbage trucks are scanned for things like radioactive materials at transfer stations. Most often the findings are relatively easy to take care of such as iodine-131. Iodine-131 has a short half-life of about 8 days. That is it takes about 8 days for half of the isotope to decay making it easy to dispose of or discard safely after those 8 days have passed. Iodine-131 is used in some medical procedures such as chemotherapy.

Other times it is more frightening like a case where radium-226 was found. That time it was not as bad as it could have been, it was caused by a school that had thrown out an old star map. In the 1940s radium-266 was commonly used to make the stars glow. The school likely did not even know what they were discarding was a hazardous material or would raise any alarms.

Other scary items that are found in trash include corrosive acids. Hydrofluoric acid is one of the most dangerous. In 1996 a sanitation worker unknowingly picked up a container of hydrofluoric acid that had been tossed in with everyday trash. He picked up the garbage and threw it in the back of his garbage collection truck. Then he turned on the crushing mechanism to compact the collected garbage before moving on to the next stop. The blade of the compactor inadvertently crushed the bottle that contained the hydrofluoric acid. That caused the sanitation worker to be sprayed with the liquid acid. The amount of hydrofluoric acid was sufficient to cost the sanitation worker his life. In this case the individual who improperly disposed of the hazardous material was never caught.

Acid - why would anyone throw this stuff away??

Of course nothing could be scarier to find in the trash or anywhere else for that matter than the remains of a dead human body. Over the years there have been several cases of these discoveries. People think if they put a body in a large industrial trash receptacle that it will never be found. In just the last several years there have been alarming numbers of newborn babies found in trashcans and dumpsters. Some are already dead while others are alive and have been saved. With a large number of couples wanting children that are unable to have one of their own, disposing of an unwanted baby in the trash is unthinkable. It is far better to put them up for adoption and let someone else have them. Instead too many young women commit a crime rather than face the results of admitting they have had a child. Though over the years many bodies or live babies have been found it is impossible to say how many may not have been and are now buried under tons of trash in landfills. In that very vein, in the US alone, 60,000 eyeballs are thrown out every year into landfill. They just sit there.

What horrors lurk underneath that trash?

Perhaps not scary for the person who found it; but definitely for the person who lost it. How about finding a $1million painting in the trash? New Yorker Elizabeth Gibson found a painting in a rubbish skip that turned out to be the ‘Three People’ by Mexican Painter Rufino Tamayo. She managed to trace the owner, and, for her trouble got $15,000. Scary that it was lost, and that the fee for returning it was, fairly pitiful.

What’s that painting in the trash? It might be worth a fortune!!

And finally, how about a story about The Black Widow Spider? In Texas, a girl was involved in a clean up program where they’d go to trash cans and empty and recycle the waste for their local church. The girl, without gloves dove in to grab the bag and instead picked up a Black Widow Spider. Fortunately for her, she dropped it in time. The girl, now a woman kills any spider that comes within three miles or her home…

A Black Widow spider - frightening!!