By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, January 5, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03
Prior to an incident this week that sickened six employees, federal inspectors tested the air at The Valley Hospital twice in recent years after worker complaints about fumes. Each time they found that the gases they tested for were within acceptable limits.
Efraim Zoldan, area director for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said samples taken from the hospital in August 1988 and August 1989, after complaints by employees, found the levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the hospital met acceptable federal guidelines for the workplace.
The hospital’s operating-room staff was reassigned and all non-emergency operations were suspended Thursday after six employees were treated for illness from an odor. Two operating rooms for emergency surgery remain open.
Workers in the hospital’s operating rooms became ill from fumes on occasion in recent years, a hospital spokeswoman said Friday.
Ilene Lumpkin, who had said Thursday that no illnesses were reported in past incidents, acknowledged Friday that there were illnesses reported.
“Occasionally one or two employees have gone to the emergency room after they had become sick,” Lumpkin said.
She said she did not know over what period of time the fumes were detected, how many times, or how many employees became sick from inhaling fumes.
Lumpkin said steps were taken to alleviate the condition after the 1988 and 1989 OSHA inspections, but said she did not know what the steps were.
A spokeswoman for OSHA said Thursday that the agency would not investigate the latest incident because the employees were treated and released, not hospitalized.
The hospital this week hired Atlantic Environmental Inc. of Dover and Chet Vogel, an engineer from New York City, to test the air and review the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system in the north wing, where the operating room is located. Results are expected early next week.
Lumpkin said the hospital will also install an air-monitoring system to test the air over time to see if the problem continues.
Keywords: RIDGEWOOD; HOSPITAL; HEALTH; HAZARD; TEST
ID: 17328600 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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