People who are caught littering used masks face a fine of up to NT$6,000, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday, as more masks are being found on beaches amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beach cleaning volunteers said they have found an increasing number of masks for adults and children in a variety of colors, Society of Wilderness chairwoman Liu Yueh-mei (劉月梅) said, calling on the government to increase public education and implement regulations about garbage disposal.
Mask littering pollutes the environment and threatens public health, as masks with nonwoven fabrics cannot naturally decompose, while used masks might carry the virus, Greenpeace Taiwan campaigner Chang Kai-ting (張凱婷) said.
Photo: Lo Chi, Taipei Times
As human-to-human transmission remains the primary method of infection for COVID-19, garbage bins that contain disposed masks in urban areas are more likely to become a vector of transmission than those at less populated seaside areas, National Taiwan University College of Public Health dean Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) said.
Masks with fabrics that do not decompose are classified as general waste, and people caught littering face a fine of between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000 under the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), EPA Department of Waste Management Director-General Lai Ying-ying (賴瑩瑩) said.
The EPA would ask local authorities to increase patrolling and cleaning in areas in which littered masks are more likely to be found and post more notices, she added.
In related news, a woman buying masks at a pharmacy in Taipei on Friday demanded that a pharmacist kneel and apologize after they handed her the wrong National Health Insurance card, sparking criticism.
Although the pharmacist said that she had asked the customer to check her card before leaving, she still knelt and apologized when the customer returned to fetch the correct card.
In a statement yesterday, the Taiwan Pharmacist Association denounced the request.
Most people are patient when lining up to buy masks, but a few have treated pharmacists disrespectfully, such as the demand that the pharmacist kowtow in apology, which has severely humiliated the pharmacist and affected the morale of all other pharmacists working hard to protect public health, it said.
The association would provide pharmacists who experience similar treatment with legal counseling resources, it said, calling on people to respect medical professionals during the pandemic.
Additional reporting by Lin Hui-chin
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching