TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Fetus Arm, Placenta Found At Arcadia Sewage Plant

ADVERTISEMENT

TODD RUGER / Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: October 16, 2007

Updated: 10/16/2007 11:10 am

DeSOTO COUNTY - A worker servicing the county wastewater treatment plant's filters discovered the arm of a human fetus and placenta Saturday afternoon, Arcadia police said.

Investigators called in the crime scene unit to 223 S. Parker Ave. to collect the decomposing arm and shoulder blade from the container where items too large to pass through the plant are collected for disposal.

The arm and placenta appeared to be from a fetus about 15 to 20 weeks into a pregnancy, and they probably were from a spontaneous miscarriage, Medical Examiner Russell Vega said.

Arcadia police told reporters Monday that they were looking for the mother, but Vega said medical examiners could not glean much information from the arm.

At 15 to 20 weeks, a fetus usually is about 6 inches long.

Vega said medical examiners could not tell how or when the arm was separated from the rest of the fetus or whether a crime occurred. Investigators made a "conservative effort" to locate additional remains in the waste container.

Examiners also could not determine whether the fetus died inside the mother, how the fetus got into the sewage system or how long it would take for the arm to travel to the filters.

A time of death would be difficult to establish, Vega said.

One concern is for the safety of the mother, who might have wanted to keep the pregnancy quiet but now might have bleeding or an infection, said Washington Hill, director of maternal and fetal medicine at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

The most common reason for miscarriages is an abnormality in the fetus, and most of the time there are no serious side effects, Hill said.

"There's a whole host of reasons why women have miscarriages," Hill said. "It's most appropriate for a woman to bring it in and to verify it."

Bringing in the miscarried fetus to doctors can also help doctors discover what went wrong and ensure the woman is safe.

Some women accidentally flush early term miscarriages down the toilet, Hill said, and some might not realize they are pregnant or miscarried.

Still, it was not immediately clear whether the law requires the mother in this case to dispose of the fetal material in a specific way.

Under the law, the mother must be past the 20th week of the pregnancy before the miscarriage is considered a fetal death. Vega said it is "very unlikely" the fetus was past that point.

The Arcadia Police Department did not return calls for comment Monday.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT