TORONTO – An Oklahoma man out for a boat ride on the weekend made a rather gruesome discovery: several biohazard containers filled with used syringes and vials of blood, floating along the Arkansas River.
Now Taylor Smyth is telling local media outlets he won’t allow his family to swim in the river any longer.
“I don’t feel comfortable swimming now,” Smyth told KFOR News in Oklahoma. “There’s no telling how long this has happened or if it’s happened more than once.”
Taylor says he was out boating on the Arkansas River with some friends in Pawnee County, Oklahoma when he saw what he first thought were discarded tackle boxes.
It was only after he got a closer look that he realized he was looking at five biohazard containment boxes filled with discarded medical waste.
Smyth typically takes his family swimming in the Arkansas River every summer weekend. Now, he’s not so sure.
“It’s sickening to think that there’s a possibility that someone could get hepatitis from something like this; the possibility is very real, I think,” Smyth said.
The Pawnee County Sheriff’s Department says it has a team of biohazard specialists investigating.
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