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CDC team to visit vacated Flagler Ops Center

News-Journal - 8/11/2018

Aug. 10--BUNNELL -- Inspectors from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will visit the Flagler County Sheriff's Office Operations Center in early September, Sheriff Rick Staly announced Thursday evening in an email to his staff members.

Officials with the Sheriff's Office and Flagler County government participated in a conference call with doctors from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of CDC, on Thursday afternoon and settled on dates for the visit.

The NIOSH inspectors will visit Flagler on Sept. 6 and 7 to do a walk-through of the largely vacated Bunnell headquarters and interview employees who believe their recent health issues can be traced to working in the building.

As many as 37 employees once stationed in the Sheriff's Office's Ops Center have filed worker's compensation claims stating that the building is contaminated and is the cause of a barrage of health symptoms ranging from skin rashes to asthma and other respiratory disorders. A team of doctors from NIOSH will seek to interview those employees over the two-day period.

This week marked two months since employees began moving out of the building and relocating to the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center or the Sheriff's Office jail administrative building. Reports from a first round of air quality and mold tests in the building released July 13 showed no mold or toxins present in the building were making Sheriff's Office employees sick.

Many employees said they are unconvinced by the study, which was conducted by a Fort Myers environmental consultant, and Staly requested a second opinion during a July 16County Commission workshop.

While the NIOSH inspectors will not collect any samples during their visit, Staly called the prospect of federal inspectors coming to the Ops Center a "great start for an outside and totally independent review of this situation."

Staly also encouraged affected employees to sign up for the 15-minute, one-on-one interviews with doctors.

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