Blood bags, bed-pans, urinals, engine oil and used syringes - the stomach-churning contents of the illegal dump at Belcamp in north Dublin are laid out in minute detail in an official report prepared for Dublin Corporation.
The report, which has been seen by The Irish Times, comes complete with lurid photos of the waste discarded on the site almost 20 years ago.
These come labelled with captions such as "blood visibly draining from a ruptured bag".
Located near a football pitch, and beside and - the report suggests - even under a main road, the dump contains 40,000 tonnes of discarded and dangerous waste from hospitals and factories around Dublin.
The waste lies five metres deep, and covers an area measuring 250 metres by 40 metres.
The sight of blood oozing into the soil was the first indicator that workers digging a trench for the North Fringe sewer last June got to show they were dealing with hazardous material.
The material was found in white plastic bags, and not in the official yellow bags prescribed for clinical waste.
When struck by a digger, they broke open to reveal large quantities of glass vials, some of which broke and released blood.
"Sharps, including hypodermic needles, were scattered through the waste. Plastic blood infusion drips were also present.
The clinical waste was commingled with other waste materials, and it was impossible to isolate the biohazard waste from other wastes," according to the report by specialist consultants Ecosafe Systems.
Other medical waste included bed pans and clinical trays.
Investigators screened the site for a number of hazards, including the "probable" presence of radioactive hospital waste.
So far at least, no radioisotope waste has been found.
Excavation has also thrown up evidence of the dumping of engine parts, waste from engine maintenance, aeronautical parts and oil drums.
The report found evidence of seepage from the dump into a local river, which is heavily polluted.
However, the impact on groundwater quality was not investigated.
Samples were sent for analysis to the Moyne Institute in the microbiology department of Trinity College.
This showed the huge variety in the waste: for example, one sample contained tuberculin syringes, plastic tubing, computer punch cards from the 1970s, cattle bones and dental amalgam.
Another batch contained a plastic urinal for bed-bound patients and discarded heavy oil.
After the illegal waste was discovered, the corporation stopped work on the £20 million sewer project.
The dump is located on land purchased by the IDA from two local families in the 1980s.
After consultation with the IDA, Fingal County Council and the Environmental Protection Agency, it was decided to proceed with the pipe-laying.
This was in spite of a recommendation by Ecosafe Systems that the dump be excavated in its entirety.
The city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, defended this decision last week.
The pipe, encased in concrete, was eventually laid on clean ground and then covered with the contaminated material and uncontaminated backfill.
Subsequently, a second pocket of waste, extending for 30 metres to the west of the first dump, was discovered in November.
But as the report shows, the Belcamp dump could be just one of many.
It points out that the EPA has estimated that there are almost 2,400 industrial sites which could pose a risk to soil and groundwater.
These include old gasworks sites, waste disposal sites, old mining facilities with tailing ponds and retail petrol stations with underground storage tanks, among many others.