Some of that waste inevitably ends up as litter. In the Indonesian capital, prepandemic pollution surveys of a local river mouth by the Research Center for Oceanography did not turn up much P.P.E. But a recent survey found that equipment like masks, face shields, gloves and hazmat suits accounted for about 15 percent of the pollution.
“Even in Jakarta, which has the country’s biggest budget for environmental management, the waste is still leaking into the environment,” said Muhammad Reza Cordova, a scientist involved in the river surveys. “What about other areas with smaller budgets?”
A hunt for syringes
An emerging concern is that, as the flood of material creates new pressures on local authorities, syringes and other truly hazardous medical waste may end up in the wrong places.
In the world’s poorest countries, that would pose a health risk to waste pickers. Tens of thousands of people already scavenge in landfills in Bangladesh, for example. But only three or four of the country’s 64 districts have facilities to safely dispose of used syringes, said Mostafizur Rahman, a solid waste expert in the capital, Dhaka.
“These landfills are not secure or sanitary, so it’s really concerning in terms of environmental health and safeguards,” said Dr. Rahman, a professor of environmental sciences at Jahangirnagar University.
And because syringes and vaccine vials are a valuable commodity on the black market, criminal gangs have an incentive to steal vaccination gear and illegally resell it into the health care system.
Late last year, Interpol warned that the pandemic had already “triggered unprecedented opportunistic and predatory criminal behavior” around the theft, falsification and illegal advertising of Covid-19 and flu vaccines. The warning came before most of the world’s population had even received a Covid shot.