A NORTH-EAST clinical waste disposal company has been fined £100,000 for offences including leaving human waste to rot in lorries.

Eurocare Environmental Services was fined £35,000 by a judge at Chester Crown Court for illegally storing clinical waste at sites in Newcastle and Birmingham.

It was fined £40,000 for polluting the River Dee with bodily fluids and £25,000 for other offences. It was also ordered to pay costs of £114,818.

The firm last year pleaded guilty to ten breaches of the Environmental Protection Act.

The firm, which handles clinical waste from almost every hospital in the region, received the fine at Chester Crown Court.

The court heard that Eurocare, based in Newcastle, left dozens of articulated trailers full of clinical waste, including human tissue and blood, at sites in Newcastle and Birmingham.

It also heard how Eurocare nightshift workers in Wrexham, North Wales, regularly emptied a 4,000-litre tank of clinical waste into a septic tank which, in turn, discharged into a tributary of the River Dee.

Prosecution barrister Mark Harris outlined the firm's catalogue of errors.

He told how Environment Agency officers began investigating Eurocare following an anonymous tip-off in November 2000.

They found nine trailers at Shepherd's yard, in Walker, Newcastle, where Eurocare was allowed to store empty containers.

But the trailers all contained plastic bags and boxes of clinical waste from hospitals across the country.

Mr Harris described how one trailer was found to be leaking blood on to the ground.

On a subsequent inspection, a trailer was found to be packed so full of waste that officials could not open the doors for fear of the contents falling out.

Another trailer was found to have four syringe needles stuck in its rubber guard rail.

Covert inspectors watched as Eurocare workers loaded trailers with clinical waste outside the yard.

Company chairman Raymond Hawthorne, who had worked in clinical waste management for almost 30 years, told the Environment Agency in an interview: ''Eurocare has never killed a fish, hurt a butterfly or damaged a dandelion in 27 years' experience.

''You can go on about blood but I could cut my knee and bleed more than that.''

Angela Morris, representing Eurocare, said management had no idea that the tank in Wrexham was being emptied into the septic tank.

She said: ''Eurocare takes its responsibilities to this industry very seriously."