Chattanooga: Illness inquiry at BlueCross site comes up empty

Without determining a cause for the sickness, local health investigators have closed their probe into the illness of 17 construction workers at the new BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee headquarters construction site on Cameron Hill downtown.

Lab testing of six stool samples showed that all specimens tested negative for the contagious norovirus as well as the bacteria salmonella, shigella, campylobacter, E. coli 0157 and Staphylococcus aureus, health department officials said on Friday.

Those bacteria would have been the likely culprits for illnesses whose symptoms include the gastrointestinal problems that the workers, experi enced such as diarrhea, nausea and dizziness, officials said.

Thirteen workers were sickened last week at the site where BlueCross is constructing a $299 million corporate headquarters. Four more workers were stricken by the illness between Monday and Wednesday of this week, said Sarah Stuart Chewning, epidemiologist with the local health department. All the people that were sick have recovered, she said.

A release from the health department said that, since the investigation did not identify a source of the illness, “it is likely that the illness is associated with the construction site.”

Local health officials would not speculate as to whether environmental factors such as air quality or pollution at the site could be possible sources for the sickness. Workers of several races and ethnicities were affected, they said.

“All the people that were ill worked on that site. ... Because a definitive source hasn’t been identified, that’s the only association that we can make,” Ms. Chewning said.

A Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Division investigation at the site is ongoing, said Milissa Reierson, communications director for Tennessee OSHA. The investigation could take a number of weeks, and officials cannot comment before its completion, she said.

An Aug. 8 on-site investigation by the Environmental Health Services division of the local health department found that sanitation facilities were not adequate, said Bonnie Deakins, director of environmental health services at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department.

“When I did my inspection, I did not find any obvious hand-washing stations, didn’t find any hand-washing soap, paper towels. Besides this being a general (recommendation) that we give all people involved in a (gastrointestinal) illness type of outbreak, I especially wanted to emphasize the hand washing, because those facilities weren’t equipped the way they should have been,” Ms. Deakins said. “But we can’t correlate by saying that’s what caused the illness.”

Skanska, the company leading the construction project, implemented the health department’s recommendations immediately, adding hand-washing stations at each row of portable toilets and implementing daily cleanings of the toilets, said John Reyhan, area general manager for the Georgia division of Skanska, an international development and construction company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Previously, hand-washing facilities at the site had been located only in the project offices, he said.

The health department’s recommendations also called for labeling coolers that hold drinkable water, as well as cleaning drinking water coolers regularly.

“I want to emphasize how important is the safety and wellness of all the craft workers on the site. That’s our priority,” Mr. Reyhan said. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure we’re maintaining a clean and healthy job site.”

Health department officials initially were aware of only eight workers who were ill last week, but more workers came forward this week as the investigation continued, Ms. Chewning said.