Five workers sue Sutter Health for cleanser ‘corrosive’ to eyes, skin, respiratory tract

Sutter Health faced high rates of infection in its hospitals from a germ that causes severe diarrhea, and to combat the problem, the company procured a cleanser so noxious that dozens of employees have reported illnesses after using it, according to a lawsuit filed in Alameda Court earlier this week.

The new product, Ecolab’s OxyCide, was cheaper than a two-step cleaning process that workers had previously used, saving Sacramento-based Sutter millions of dollars, attorneys alleged in a suit that seeks class-action status to represent 1,800 environmental services workers.

”Rather than eliminate the product when confronted with its effects, Sutter wrote off the harm as user error and put the workers through re-training, doubling down on knowingly false claims to all EVS workers that the product was essentially harmless,” according to the lawsuit.

Following The Bee’s request for comment, Sutter Health released a statement saying that the health and safety of employees is the company’s highest priority and that Sutter leaders are proud of efforts being taken by affiliates to reduce hospital-acquired infections, including those caused by clostridioides difficile, or the c. diff bacterium.

“Our hospitals exceed both state and national measures of quality in this and many other measures,” Sutter officials noted in the statement. “We disagree with the claims in the lawsuit or that it accurately characterizes our affiliates’ efforts to watch out for the health and safety of our employees and patients. We feel confident in our position in this case and will continue our emphasis on patient and employee safety.”

The lawsuit, which names Dionna Bradshaw, Bianca Minix, Eva Osorio, Barbara Smillie, and Lawana Williams as plaintiffs, said that multiple physicians warned Sutter not to force environmental service workers to use OxyCide.

Dr. Sophie Cole, a Yale University-trained internist with 30 years of experience, stated that according to data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health: “[S]afety should be a major concern for anyone using it (OxyCide) because it is corrosive to the eyes, the skin and the respiratory tract. Symptoms from inappropriate exposures can include cough, labored breathing, shortness of breath and burns to the eyes.”

After an evaluation of Minix, Cole told Sutter that Minix’s exposure to OxyCide resulted in reactive airways disease, a condition that occurs when a person’s bronchial tubes overreact to an irritant swell and make it difficult to breathe air into the lungs.

Williams told her supervisors that OxyCide caused a severe burning sensation in her eyes and uncontrollable coughing after her initial exposure. She was so concerned that she drafted a petition protesting the use of the product, garnering signatures from 140 workers.

While some Sutter workers complained to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and other regulatory agencies in an attempt to get help, court documents state others filed workers’ compensation claims from injuries they said they sustained from the use of OxyCide.

Sutter had assembled a systemwide team of experts who had researched OxyCide and other potential cleansers, attorneys said, and this group included environmental services managers or directors as well as a group known as the Sutter Infection Control Counsel that was headed by a Sutter Health employee and made up of representatives from the company’s hospitals.

Any research of the Ecolab product should have turned up “an avalanche of scientific and medical literature damning the product,” the Sutter employees’ suit stated, “including a 2016 posting to the NIOSH website titled, ‘Are Hospital Cleaning Staff at Risk When Using a One-step Cleaner?’”

An environmental risk consultant for Sutter, Mark Shirley, acknowledged reviewing literature that concluded OxyCide was hazardous, the lawsuit alleged, but he dismissively summarized it as describing only “a tickle in the throat or a little runny nose or watery eyes.”

Sutter and its affiliates maintained that OxyCide is safe in communications with environmental services workers, the plaintiffs said, even though they knew it was not. The company wanted savings achieved from use of the product but also wanted to eliminate as many c. diff and other hospital-acquired infections as possible because Medicare does not cover the cost of treating those illnesses, plaintiffs said.

This means Sutter or its affiliates would have to pay out an average of $1,100 to care for each patient who acquired those types of infections, stated the lawsuit, filed by Erickson Kramer Osborne LLP of San Francisco.

Sutter, however, said that “every affiliate in the Sutter system assesses its own circumstances and implements best practices to reduce c.diff infections.”

The case, assigned to Judge Frank Roesch, has not been scheduled for trial.