Inquiry looks at workers' hair loss

Several workers at Equifax Payment Services are affected. "This looks like it's going to be a complicated one,'' an official says.

By CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 16, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- After several employees suddenly lost their hair, a federal agency has launched an investigation into possible environmental contamination at the Roosevelt Boulevard offices of Equifax Payment Services, one of Pinellas County's largest employers.

So far, the investigation has been inconclusive.

"A number of people have suffered hair loss, and we are looking into it," Lawrence Falck, area director of the Tampa office of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, said Tuesday. "This looks like it's going to be a complicated one."

One possible source of contamination that OSHA is examining is the building's past life as Honeywell's military avionics division, producing navigation systems for missiles and military aircraft, Falck said. OSHA also is looking at the possibility of contamination from the nearby Toytown landfill, he said.

Falck said he could not disclose details of the investigation, which began after Equifax employees filed a complaint at the end of June. He could not say how many employees in the building at 11601 Roosevelt Blvd. were affected by the hair loss or what kind of treatment they might be undergoing, if any.

A spokesman for the Atlanta-based company said three employees in the St. Petersburg office had complained about sudden hair loss in March. They all work in the same general area of the building, along with about 500 other employees, spokesman David Mooney said. He could not say whether their hair loss was partial or total, or what sort of treatment they might be undergoing, but he said they all still are employed by Equifax.

As a result of their complaint, Equifax immediately brought in a consultant to test the building's air quality and radiation levels, he said.

"There was no indication of any problem," Mooney said. "The results were negative."

That wrapped up the investigation for Equifax, but it did not satisfy OSHA. Falck said his agency is consulting with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that conducts research into the causes of workplace diseases and injuries.

But OSHA officials have not called in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Environmental Protection or other agencies that normally deal with pollution or contamination.

Equifax is the largest check verification company in the world and in recent years has moved into credit-card verification, marketing services and the processing of new forms of payment, such as electronic checks on the Internet. Its St. Petersburg office has 2,200 employees, ranging from $7-an-hour call-center operators to software engineers with starting salaries in the $40,000-per-year range.

The Equifax office abuts the old Toytown landfill. St. Petersburg garbage trucks began hauling municipal refuse to the Toytown pits in 1962, long before stringent environmental regulations on what could be buried underground. The trash kept pouring in until the mid 1980s, filling holes up to 80 feet deep and towering more than 20 feet above the surrounding land.

To close Toytown, Pinellas County had to build an impermeable wall around the landfill and sink the wall into the ground to prevent pollutants from contaminating groundwater.

Assistant County Administrator Jake Stowers said county officials have received no complaints about contamination from the old landfill, particularly anything that might cause sudden hair loss.

"Generally the only thing you're going to get out of there is some methane," he said.

Equifax moved into its Roosevelt Boulevard office in 1995 after the building spent 10 years as home to Honeywell's military avionics division. Honeywell consolidated its operations at its U.S. 19 campus in Clearwater.

Honeywell officials did not return calls for comment Tuesday.

At the time, Equifax's Tampa Bay operations were scattered among seven different buildings in Tampa. Equifax officials spent 18 months studying how best to consolidate their Florida employees in one location, and settled on the gigantic Honeywell building in St. Petersburg's Gateway area.

The 300,000-square-foot building, about 21/2 football fields long and 11/2 football fields wide, was the largest building the company could find in Pinellas or Hillsborough counties.

Equifax agreed to pay more than $40-million over 13 years to lease the building from its owner, Presco, which according to Equifax officials is an affiliate of office equipment company Pitney Bowes. The property tax bill, however, goes to Honeywell.

A complete renovation of the building added 244 miles of cable for computers and 2,200 live phone extensions to handle all the telephone traffic generated by the company's operations. Even with those renovations, moving into the Honeywell building was cheaper than building a new headquarters, Kennedy said then.

Falck said the employees who complained to OSHA were suffering from alopecia, which is the medical term for hair loss.

There are various types of alopecia, ranging from the common male pattern baldness to the more mysterious alopecia areata, a disease where the cells of an individual's own immune system prevent the follicles from producing hair fiber. Some sufferers develop only a few bare patches that regrow hair in less than a year. Others lose all their head and body hair, a condition know known as alopecia universalis.

- Times Researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this story.

-- Craig Pittman covers environmental issues and can be reached at craig@sptimes.com or at (727) 893-8530.

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