Finding the
cause of a crippling illness in 11 workers at Quality Pork
Processors is the aim of a state investigation. For one of
the first to be diagnosed, it all started with a charley
horse.
AUSTIN, MINN. -- The wages and
overtime Susan Kruse made working for 15 years for Quality
Pork Processors helped her support her son, Travis, a
ninth-grader. She can hear the evening shift-change whistle
from inside the small house she's renovating a block away
from the plant.
But last December, Kruse, 36,
started having cramps in her legs, followed by muscle
stiffness, soreness and pain that's left her unable to work
and forces her to use a walker to get around.
Kruse was among the first of
the 11 employees at the Austin plant to be diagnosed with a
rare disease called chronic inflammatory demyelinating
polyneuropathy (CIDP), which typically strikes only two out
of every 100,000 people.
"It started with a charley
horse in my calf that wouldn't go away," Kruse said in an
interview at her home Tuesday night. "Then my hands and feet
got sore and cold and numb. I had perfect health before."
"She can't do a lot of the
things she used to," Travis Kruse said. "Before, she could
lift heavy boxes and stuff, but now she gets tired after she
walks a little."
Plant owner Kelly Wadding said
Tuesday that investigators told him they probably won't know
"for some time" what caused the illnesses.
Officials from the Minnesota Department of Health, which
disclosed the illnesses Monday, are conducting the
investigation. Health
Department staffers arrived in
Austin on Tuesday. Another team is researching the disease.
"We're trying to get a sense of
whether the incidence has changed in recent years," said
Ruth Lynfield, the state's epidemiologist, adding that there
could be clusters of cases elsewhere in the country that
have not been recognized.
The investigation is expected
to take months.Connecting the dots
The Austin cases were connected
because of a fortunate confluence of events, Lynfield said.
Occupational health nurses at the plant were the first to
recognize that they were seeing an unusual number of people
with odd neurological symptoms. They began calling doctors
in the area, asking if they knew what might be causing them.
They very quickly connected
with doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester who happen to
be among the nation's experts in CIDP, she said.
Kruse spent Tuesday at Mayo completing another battery of
tests. Every other week, she spends five hours receiving an
intravenous drug that doctors hope will curtail her
symptoms, which include muscle weakness, pain and tingling
sensations.
Though she's taking online
accounting classes, doctors have told Kruse she may never
work again. Her disability insurance payments recently
ended, and she's living on Social Security.
Kruse had been puzzled about
the illness until last week, when someone from the Health
Department called her and asked questions. Then she ran into
a co-worker at Mayo who had the same illness.
But it wasn't until Monday's
Health Department news conference acknowledging that 11
workers were ill that she realized the link to her job.The
air compressor angle
Kruse worked in the "day kill
area," where her job was to carve meat out of the back of
butchered pigs' heads with a small knife. Her work area was
next to the place where compressed-air hoses were used to
remove brain material.
The cause of CIDP is unknown
and could include any number of factors, including
infectious microbes, toxins or something from the pigs that
triggers the body's immune system to attack healthy tissue,
according to experts.
CIDP is the chronic form of another disease, Guillain-Barré
syndrome, which develops much more rapidly and has a number
of known triggers. It first received public attention in
1976 when linked to the swine flu vaccine.
It does not appear to be spread
by person-to-person contact, Lynfield said.
Health officials were concerned
enough about exposure to raw pig meat to recommend that the
plant shut down the air compressor system used to extract
brain tissue from the skulls.
Symptoms first emerged around the same time the plant began
using the high-powered air system. Some health experts think
exposure to blood and pulverized tissue might have caused
the autoimmune response.
But the compressed-air system
almost certainly is not the problem, said mechanical
engineer Frank Moskowitz, a compressed-air expert based in
Phoenix. "Compressed air itself absolutely cannot introduce
anything bad," he said. He said pressurization kills any
living organism in the air.
Air systems have made workers
ill in the past because they unintentionally drew in carbon
monoxide from a truck idling near the intake ports for the
compressed air, Moskowitz said. But that wouldn't cause the
serious illnesses seen at the food plant.
Using compressed air is fairly
common in the food industry, said Frank Busta, the director
emeritus of the National Center for Food Protection and
Defense at the University of Minnesota. The technology is
used to inflate milk cartons, move food powders through a
plant and make bread.'Vital to our economy'
In Austin, a city of 23,500
where bronze hogs grace the entrance of the Spam Museum and
hog farms and smokestacks of processing plants dominate the
landscape, many expressed sympathy for those who are ill but
remained confident that the industry that powers the town
will not be affected.
At the Austin Chamber of
Commerce, Sandy Forstner, executive director, underscored
the importance of the hog industry in Austin, where Hormel
and Quality Pork Processors employ about 3,600 people.
"There are lot of people on
their payrolls," Forstner said. "That facility is vital to
our economy. Everybody has to be cautious, but we also have
to find out what it is without overreacting."
Kruse said she liked her job
and is sorry she can no longer do it.
"It's depressing," she said of
her increased weakness and decreased mobility -- and of her
uncertain future. "I hope that my arms aren't so weak that I
can't at least get a desk job."
