Dentist charged with dumping medical waste waits for grand jury

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Dentist charged with dumping medical waste waits for grand jury

Staff Writer, 609-463-6713

Published: Saturday, October 11, 2008

By BRIAN IANIERI
CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE - The case against a Pennsylvania dentist accused of dumping medical waste off the Avalon coast is waiting to be heard by a grand jury.

A grand jury will decide whether to indict Thomas W. McFarland Jr. on charges of throwing disposable dental needles, cotton swabs and other debris in Townsends Inlet on Aug. 22.

The waste began washing ashore in Avalon the next day and caused the borough to close beaches repeatedly at the end of the summer season.

Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office, said he wouldn't discuss when the case would be presented to a grand jury.

Five weeks ago, state Attorney General Anne Milgram announced McFarland was charged with unlawful disposal of regulated medical waste and unlawful discharge of a pollutant, third-degree felonies that each carry a possible prison term of five years.

The dentist allegedly confessed to Avalon police as a large-scale investigation was zeroing in on a small number of dental practices where the debris could have originated, Milgram said in September.

Authorities have not revealed McFarland's alleged motives.

McFarland is free on his own recognizance, Aseltine said.

McFarland could not be reached at his Wynnewood, Pa., or Avalon Manor telephone listings Friday. An answering machine at his dental practice says he will not accept appointments or patients.

His lawyer, Joseph Rodgers, did not return a call Friday.

Beginning Aug. 23 and continuing for several days, about 300 Accuject disposable dental needles, 180 cotton swabs and several blue-and-white plastic capsules, used to hold filling material for dental work, washed up on a one-mile stretch of Avalon's beaches.

McFarland was not implicated in any other cases of syringes washing up on beaches in Cape May or Atlantic counties.

The early reports stirred fears from the late 1980s when medical waste washing ashore throughout New Jersey made national news and closed beaches along the coast.

E-mail Brian Ianieri:

BIanieri@pressofac.com