COVID-19 creates new type of litterbug

When Debbie Barna takes her dogs Moe and Joey for a walk, she sees gloves and masks around her apartment building.

“I’ve noticed on the lawn area where we take the dogs, the masks are starting to appear,” she says. “It’s noticeable. You get the face masks. You get the rubber gloves.”

The property maintenance company Barna works for in Winnipeg and others in Canada are experiencing an increase in medical litter during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We noticed it particularly outside of grocery stores and drug stores,” says Brian Winch of Quality Maintenance in Calgary. “I have noticed more of it spreading out to other types of businesses.

“A lot of people now, when they get gas, whether it be gloves or sanitary wipes, when they fuel up ... even though there’s litter containers right by the pumps, they don’t go there. They just toss them on the ground.”

Graham Dreger of Winnipeg’s Terrace Property Maintenance has seen more discarded masks since Canada’s chief public health officer said earlier this month that wearing a non-medical mask could help limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“There has obviously been an increase in masks because people weren’t wearing masks before, but I don’t think it’s as bad here as it is in other parts of the country,” Dreger says.

Greg Jankowski of Patch of Green in Milton, Ont., doesn’t see discarded wipes “but gloves and masks definitely.”

“In the parking lot and the flower beds, I guess the wind blows them when people toss them,” Jankowski says. “Any corner of the parking lot or in a stairwell going to an underground garage.”

How hazardous are those blue gloves tossed aside in parking lots in terms of an infection risk to the public?

“It’s hard to say,” says Dr. Chris Sikora, medical health officer for the Edmonton zone of Alberta Health Services.

“When we look at this discarded material, whether it’s gloves or masks from whatever source, (it) may carry viral material from the last wearer. I don’t know how long the virus would remain active or viable on those surfaces.”