By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

It started with headaches. Then came dizziness, nausea, a metallic aftertaste and inability to concentrate. That’s what Rehab Counselor Mingo Shaver recalls feeling at work April 9 before he hyperventilated and nearly passed out. An ambulance rushed the burly Local 768 member from the Ida B. Israel Community Health Center on Neptune Avenue in Brooklyn to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital, a half a mile away.

“Doctors said my lungs were filled with carbon dioxide,” Mr. Shaver said. “I have never experienced anything like that.”

And he is not alone. On March 29, 12 staff members at the rehab clinic signed out sick. The next day 13 more did the same. The following Monday, robust DC 37 Rep Joe Nazario visited the site and “got a profuse nose bleed.” Next door, at the family clinic, Nurse’s Aide Adele Ramos was rushed to the ER April 6. Hospitalized for an asthma attack, she returned to work 14 days later.

All told, 76 percent of the staff at 2201 Neptune Ave. share medical symptoms that leave them sick and tired all the time. DC 37 locals represent more than 40 employees at the site. The DC 37 Delegate council voted unanimously May 22 to demand that HHC move members out and relocate the clinic back to Coney Island Hospital.

No one knows what causes the illnesses. But the workers and their patients continue to get sick. After a short while at the clinic, this reporter experienced difficulty swallowing and burning, itchy skin.

Sick leave used up, pay is docked
Since it opened in January, the rehab clinic has been bleeding dollars in staff-hours, sick leave and services to the community. By April, nearly half the employees had used all their sick and annual leave for work-related illnesses. Now when workers are out sick, management docks their pay.

Dr. Leonard Davidman, president of NYC Psychologists Local 1189 said: “It’s unconscionable that a health organization would hide environmental pollution from its workers.”

Union leaders asked the DC 37 Health and Safety Unit to investigate. The unit recommended immediately removing workers from the site, but HHC refuses to cooperate fully with the union. In an inconclusive environmental study, HHC tested only air quality.

Coney Island is a notorious brownfield, an illegal dumping ground for toxic waste, and the clinic sits near a polluted creek. Some experts say the leased building itself is toxic. Others point to disease-carrying pigeons and seagulls from the nearby shore, nesting on the roof where their germs can get sucked into the ventilation system. And still others believe the construction of a baseball stadium for the Brooklyn Cyclones may have released poisons from toxic waste buried underground.

“Several employees have suffered serious health consequences of their exposures” at the site, wrote Dr. Stephen M. Levin of the renowned Mt. Sinai Center for Occupational and Environment Medicine. He recommended that “employees be transferred until the environmental problems are identified and remediated.”

HHC management insists the workers’ claims are false, and they are reluctant to assist DC 37 members seeking Worker’s Compensation. Still, management reassigned one security guard, citing “medical problems you have encountered while working in the clinic.”

HHC is trying to shut 27 clinics in low-income communities, but insists on keeping open the two clinics at the toxic Ida B. Israel building.

“If the clinic is used by the community, make it a capital project and fix it,” said DC 37 Deputy Administrator Zachary Ramsey. “We want HHC to relocate our members. Move the clinic so we can continue to service the community.”