Three With Tb Given Workers Comp State Says Trio Likely Contracted Illness At Medical-Waste Plant

Three workers who probably contracted tuberculosis from a Lewis County medical-waste processor will get worker’s compensation, the state has ruled.

Thirteen other workers who were exposed to the disease will also be compensated for medical bills and lost wages, the Department of Labor and Industries said Friday.

“I’m thrilled, very thrilled,” said Carol Rose, who has not worked at the Stericycle Inc. plant in Morton since she was diagnosed with TB in April.

“We said it all along (that the workers got sick from their jobs), but until somebody officially said it, it didn’t seem to mean anything.”

TB typically is passed through prolonged exposure as an infected person coughs or sneezes, sending the bacteria into the air. Each of the three infected workers has a different strain of the disease.

“What this has done to me and my family is unbelievable,” said Dave Wiley, who hasn’t worked for three months.

“I’ve been in quarantine. My kids had to be taken away from me. And we had to have the kids stuck with needles” for TB tests, Wiley said.

Labor and Industries retained Patricia Sparks, a Seattle physician specializing in occupational and internal medicine, to review the worker’s compensation claims.

She determined it was more probable than not that the workers got sick from their jobs, a department spokesman said.

Investigators used DNA fingerprinting to eliminate the possibility that the three sick workers infected each other.

The 13 current employees and two former employees exposed to the disease did not become ill.

State and national investigators have studied the plant but have not pinpointed the source of the TB.

Stericycle, an Illinois-based company, has accepted waste from hospitals, clinics and laboratories for five years from throughout the Northwest and British Columbia.

The company shreds the waste - everything from surgical smocks to test tubes and petri dishes - then heats it until it is considered sterile and ready for a landfill.

It was fined $1,100 by the state for violations of worker safety and health rules earlier this month. The company is contesting the fine, which is the plant’s first.