Hypodermic needles creating field hazard for Little League park

A New Mexico Little League park is fighting a battle against discarded syringes with attached hypodermic needles amid the region’s opioid epidemic.

Atrisco Park, home of the Atrisco Valley Little League, in Albuquerque is racing to clean up syringes littering fields and the grounds to protect the children who play on them, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

The Atrisco Valley Little League president, Hector Aguilar, said earlier this month an 11-year-old girl was practicing base sliding when a needle pierced her foot. He said the girl was taken to a hospital and tested and “will have to undergo further testing.”

He and other coaches and volunteers walk the six baseball fields before practices or games often find 20 to 30 syringes a day.

“The needle problem affects all the fields. We even find them in the dugout … and under the bleachers. … There is one field at the west end, the very back of the park, that we can no longer use because it’s just saturated with needles,” Aguilar said.

While the state has enacted measures in recent years to combat the scourge, its drug overdose rate of 24.8 per 100,000 still remains above the national average.

“It was very sad, disgusting and, above all, disappointing,” said Marlena Gurule, whose two sons play at the park. “As a mother, safety is my biggest concern, of course. But another consideration is that the Little League operates off of concession sales. It’s what allows us to purchase equipment. If Atrisco Valley Little League has to shut some of its fields, it financially impacts the league as a whole …”