Ashes from Ebola victim’s apartment in limbo 8A The Sentinel- Record, Sunday, November 2, 2014

It took a crew 38 hours to clear out the Dallas apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan was staying before he was diagnosed Sept. 30 with Ebola. Hazmat suit-clad workers piled shoes, carpets, mattresses, bed sheets, clothes and kids’ backpacks into 140 55-gallon drums. Only a few items were salvaged: a computer hard drive, legal documents, family photos, an old Bible belonging to Duncan’s grandmother.

The drums were packed, decontaminated and then carted away by Cleaning Guys environmental services employees. The contents were incinerated. But nearly a month later, the ashes sit in limbo at a facility in Port Arthur, Texas, according to Veolia North America, the company that owns the facility, as Louisiana officials fight to keep it out of a landfill there.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says incinerated Ebola waste poses no danger, Louisiana officials earlier this month asked a judge to block Duncan’s waste from entering the state, saying they wanted to determine for themselves that it was not dangerous. On Friday, state officials announced that Veolia has agreed to keep the ash out of the state’s landfill.

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said in a statement that the agreement “ends this chapter in the controversy of transportation and disposal of Ebola waste.”

But the unresolved fate of the ashes highlights the problem U.S. hospitals and communities could face in disposing of their own Ebola-related refuse.

Hospitals routinely deal with hazardous medical waste, sealing, transporting and disposing of vials of HIV-infected blood or boxes of used syringes. But

The Associated Press WASTE BARRELS: In this Oct. 3 photo, a hazardous material cleaner removes a blue barrel from the apartment in Dallas, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas stayed. The apartment contents were incinerated but...