Many hospitals have been using a disinfectant called OxyCide to prevent the spread of disease.
The only problem is that the cleaner has now been linked to huge, huge problems of lung
problems that doctors and nurses are suffering with.
Entire staffs are suffering with.
I have Scott Hardy, the president of top class actions, joining me now to explain what's
going on.
Scott, you know, this is your specialty.
You see these kinds of cases come down the pipe all the time.
This is, this is an odd one.
This is here you've got an entire medical staffs, you've got doctors and nurses and
everybody working around the hospital believing that OxyCide is there to make them safe.
Give me your take on it.
Sure.
So OxyCide was created by Ecolab, you know, a massive industrial cleaning company and
they came out with OxyCide to battle things like C diff.
C diff is really hard to kill.
So they made this super strong cleaning solution that at first to actually use it, the hospital
workers, the, the, the cleaners there would have to put on full protective gear and you
know, masks, gloves and then be able to clean these rooms to battle things like C diff.
But now, they've found that it's very dangerous.
And so Oxy, Ecolab came out and said, okay, we've got OxyCide, now we're going to start
diluting it so you can buy this special diluter.
And at that point, the cleaners no longer have to wear or are required to wear n95 masks
because of the, of the strong fumes.
So then they use this and they wipe it down and it actually stays wet for at least three
minutes and that's intentional to continue to disinfect and kill these bacteria like
C diff.
So Scott, the problem you have, I mean, as we said, you've got doctors, nurses, patients
who are on the death bed, sometimes.
Their immune system is really, really in bad shape and so, so now you're spraying OxyCide
all over the area where they're in the hospital.
So it's not just doctors and nurses, it's patients too.
What are the longterm effects of OxyCide?
We're seeing that doctors, nurses, janitorial workers, the cleaners that are going into
these rooms, they're developing strong allergies to OxyCide from inhaling all of the fumes
over a long period of time.
And so that exposure amounts to, they can get sores on their mucus membranes.
I reviewed more than a hundred different submissions from people.
They had cracked hands, cracked skin from constantly being, touching services.
They've got stinging, watery eyes, headaches.
You've got doctors and nurses that are walking into these rooms that might've been on vacation
for a week.
As soon as they walk into a sterilized room, they have something like an asthma attack.
They can't do their jobs anymore because of these severe reactions from these fumes.
So Scott, here's what puzzles me.
This is, there's been a class action brought in this case, but as you know, you can't class
action individual injuries like you're talking about here, that some of these injuries are
permanent injuries.
I mean, you're talking about permanent injury to the lungs.
You're talking about a whole host of things that don't go away.
How is this being classed?
I don't quite understand.
You can't class an injury case, but I see this as being classed.
Exactly.
So right now there's been a class action filed, but we also see this becoming a mass tort,
you know, there will be an MDL filed eventually to represent these doctors, nurses, cleaners
on an individual basis to make sure that they can get compensated for these injuries.
If they can't go into work anymore, you know, you know, without suffering a severe allergic
reaction, then we want to make sure that those folks are able to get paid as this lawsuits,
these individual lawsuits start progressing.
Yeah, well I certainly see the, I see, I certainly see the possibilities of what we would call
an individual injury case or a mass, mass tort kind of case.
But the thing that concerns me most is they've just, there's not even enough time at this
point to figure out how bad the longterm injuries may be.
So, we'll have you back on the show and talk about this because this is in hospitals all
over, all over the world at this point.
This was sold as, this was sold as the new best standard of practice to use in a hospital
and now we're seeing this take place.
Scott, thank you for joining me.
You're welcome.
Thanks for your time, Pap.