Emails show Pittsburgh has failed to comply with regulations for needle exchanges

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Discarded used syringes are a public health hazard, but a KDKA investigation has found that for the past two years, the city failed to comply with health department regulations.

It’s called a needle exchange, but since implementing its program 18 months ago, KDKA Investigates has learned the city failed to develop a program to collect and safely dispose of used needles and syringes.   

In nearly two dozen emails obtained through a right-to-know request, KDKA Investigates found that despite repeated pleas from the Allegheny County Health Department, the city failed to develop a policy or comply with regulations requiring the accounting and disposal of the needles, nor has it made available required sharps disposal containers to ensure the public’s health and safety. Without those safeguards, KDKA-TV has continually found needles strewn around trails and in open piles near encampments.

Sheehan: “You can see that the program went off without proper safeguards, right?” 

Schmidt: “Yeah, probably didn’t use best practices around the proper safeguards.” 

In email after email obtained by KDKA, the city fails to deliver when county health officials requested a needle disposal policy. Then Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt began overseeing the city’s Office of Community Health and Safety, which administers the program and saw it wasn’t working.  

Sheehan: “Basically, since this needle exchange has been run, there’s been no exchange at all. I mean basically a lot of these needles have just been discarded. Is that correct?” 

Schmidt: “It’s not my current assessment.” 

Absent a developed plan, Schmidt says he eventually decided to pull the plug and stop distributing needles until the city can ensure the public’s safety.

“There wasn’t really accountability around how many needles were given out in return for how man sharps containers — that sort of thing,” Schmidt said. “So that’s when we paused the program. I would rather we pause it, we slow roll it, whatever it takes to get it done the right way rather than just roll it out for the sake of saying we’re doing something,” Schmidt said.  

After suspending the distribution of needles for two months, Schmidt says the city has now begun a small pilot program with a limited number of homeless addicts, giving them needles only when they return the used ones and trying to get them into recovery programs.

In the meantime, the city has finally developed a draft disposal policy to ramp the program back up. It outlines the need for sharp box containers to be placed at encampment sites though the city has still yet to purchase those containers.

The city has done needle cleanups but just this last week, KDKA-TV found discarded needles throughout an encampment on the North Side and needles along an encampment on the Allegheny Riverfront Downtown, some even in the path of pedestrians.

Sheehan: “There are still syringes down by the Allegheny Riverfront for runners and joggers to step on.” 

Schmidt: “There are, and I want to be clear, we’re not the only ones doing programs like this. There’s Prevention Point, there’s other outreach agencies, there’s also Good Samaritans that feel that’s their right to do that.” 

After operating without the proper safeguards, Schmidt says the needle exchange program will take baby steps until they get it right and try to convince everyone else giving out needles to do the same.