To the uninformed, it appeared to be an odd scene Saturday in North Park, where men wearing white lab coats and goggles discarded chemicals and powerful painkillers.
But it wasn’t a hazardous emergency, it was a recycling drive at Northeastern Illinois University that was used to highlight the dangers of prescription drugs being flushed down the toilet or abused by teenagers who share them with friends at so-called pharm parties.
“A lot of what happens these days is teenagers go through medicine cabinets and take the Vicodin that’s left over from your foot surgery two years ago or the Adderall their little brother is using,” said Lisabeth Weiner, a spokeswoman for Rosecrance Health Network, a substance-abuse treatment center in Rockford.
“It can be very, very dangerous,” she said.
Weiner cited an alarming rise in new abusers of prescription drugs, who rival the number of new users of marijuana. About 60 percent of people who abuse prescription painkillers say they got them from a friend or a relative, according to a survey by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Rosecrance officials organized the drive with the Chicago Department of Environment, which runs five recycling drives a year at various locations in the city, in addition to operating a drug disposal initiative at its facility at 1160 N. North Branch St. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and the first Saturday of every month.
Some residents dropped off chemicals like WD-40 and Murphy’s Oil Soap as officials from Heritage Environmental Services separated chemicals into barrels of poisons, flammable liquids, pesticides and aerosol cans that would be reused or safely discarded at a facility in Indianapolis.
Others dropped off old bicycles and electronics. Dozens of computers sat on the pavement, waiting to be refurbished and delivered to public schools.
Rusty bicycles were loaded into the back of a trailer, destined to be fixed and resold or delivered to developing countries by the Chicago Working Bikes Cooperative.
Chris Paluch, 46, of North Park pulled into the parking lot to unload, among other things, fluorescent light bulbs that he used to throw away until he discovered they contain mercury, which harms the environment.
Now he goes out of his way to discard them at recycling drives.
“It’s nice that they have this,” he said, “because in Chicago, you can throw anything in the garbage and they’ll take it.”
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gfsmith@tribune.com
