Equifax found to be free of contaminants

That only five employees had unexplained hair loss is deemed "somewhat normal,'' statistically.

By CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 16, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Federal investigators are ready to close the books on the mysterious hair loss among employees at Equifax Payment Services, the director of the Tampa area office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Friday.

"It would be premature of me to give them a clean bill of health," OSHA's Lawrence Falck said. "But (the investigators) could not find any source of contamination in the building."

In interviewing employees, they found only five who had suffered a total hair loss that could not be explained by other causes, according to Falck and Equifax officials.

Total hair loss occurs in about 2 percent of the population, so five out of 2,200 "appears to be somewhat normal," Falck said.

The rest of the employees complaining of hair loss had patchy or thinning hair that could have been caused by medication, pregnancy, skin disease or male pattern baldness, the investigators found.

There also were "10 people with alleged thinning that was not recognizable on examination," Equifax Executive Vice President Larry J. Towe wrote in a memo announcing the results to employees.

Barring some unforeseen development while the investigators prepare their final report, Falck said, OSHA's investigation is all but wrapped up. That leaves only a state investigation into possible contamination of the water and sediment under Equifax's 55-acre property.

Tests of the groundwater found contamination by thallium, a heavy metal that can cause hair loss in humans who are poisoned by it. But so far no one has been able to explain how employees might have come into contact with that unusual contaminant, and recent tests have raised questions about the validity of the earlier samples.

The news that the federal investigation is winding down delighted Equifax officials.

"This has been investigated to a fare-thee-well," said Equifax spokeswoman Carol Hassel. "It's a clean site. We're really very, very anxious to bring this whole situation to a close."

The investigation was spurred by complaints first made in March that a number of employees in the Equifax building at 11601 Roosevelt Blvd. had suffered a mysterious hair loss, along with a variety of other possible ailments. One employee sent a letter to federal officials in June that said four women "are totally bald and wearing wigs."

After the St. Petersburg Times first reported on the OSHA investigation last month, dozens more current and former employees called the agency to add their names to the list of potential victims.

Equifax Payment Services, which deals with customers around the globe, is part of the largest check verification company in the world. It seemed an unlikely place to find such a problem.

But the building, which Equifax moved into five years ago, sits across Roosevelt Boulevard from the old Toytown landfill, closed in the 1980s. The building was occupied for 10 years by Honeywell Inc., which has left hazardous waste problems at a number of sites around the country.

So OSHA sent in experts to take samples from throughout the 300,000-square-foot building, and Equifax hired its own consultants to check both the building and the 55-acre parcel it sits on in the Gateway area.

This week, a team of experts from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spent two days combing the building for clues and interviewing employees with potential health problems.

The NIOSH investigators talked to 28 employees in person and interviewed five others over the telephone, working from a list provided by the employees who complained to OSHA and others who had reported problems to the company's human resources department.

They found no signs of environmental contamination in the building. The tiny amount of radiation they detected was not sufficient to cause hair loss, and "the doctors further reported that there was no observed exposure pathway for cancer," Towe wrote in his memo.

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