More than 3,700 people had signed a petition requesting safe syringe disposal in the stores’ bathrooms as of Friday. “At the end of the day, we want to make sure that our partners are safe,” Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said. While the boxes will undoubtedly help Starbucks employees to feel safer at work, health experts say the risk of contracting those diseases from an accidental needle poke is low. An unvaccinated person who is stuck with a contaminated syringe would have a 30 percent chance of contracting hepatitis B, a 3 percent chance of contracting hepatitis C and a 0.3 percent chance of contracting HIV, he explained. “It doesn’t hang out on needles.”Hepatitis C virus, which is about 10 times more infectious than HIV, survives longer outside of the body.

Source: Huffington Post January 11, 2019 19:07 UTC