Granville County, NC Public Health Rules: Syringe Disposal (2026)

Section 38-102 defines sharps as needles, syringes and scalpel blades, and treats them as a category of infectious and regulated medical waste alongside blood products and pathological waste. Section 38-104(m) sets the household rule directly: all sharps must be placed in a sealed, puncture-proof container prior to disposal, with no exception written into the subsection for how the container is obtained. That storage duty sits inside the same Article IV, Chapter 38 provision that governs general solid waste storage and disposal, so it applies to every property in the unincorporated county alongside the weekly-removal and container rules in the rest of § 38-104.

The rule is reinforced at the county's neighborhood drop-off points. Section 38-113(d) lists twenty categories of waste that may not be deposited in the solid waste convenience containers placed around the county, and item (15) names sharps not properly contained specifically, separate from the broader regulated medical waste exclusion in item (3). A resident who shows up with a puncture-proof sealed sharps container is not turned away by that list; it is loose or improperly packaged sharps that the container site is required to refuse.

Section 38-103(c) puts the solid waste director in charge of enforcing storage and disposal standards across the article, and because subsection (m) carries no fine of its own, a violation of the sealed-container duty defaults to the county's general civil penalty procedure in Code § 1-6.