[nagdu] When Treating One Worker's Allergy Sets Off Another's

[Ginger Kutsch]

New York Times

May 10, 2010

When Treating One Worker's Allergy Sets Off Another's

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE 

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INDIANAPOLIS - It's a case of King Solomon meets the Americans
With Disabilities Act. 

In her first week at a new job, Emily Kysel suffered an allergy
attack so severe that she had to go home early one day. A
co-worker was eating buffalo wings at her desk, and the wings
contained paprika, to which Ms. Kysel, 24, has a rare and
potentially fatal allergy. 

She nearly died five years ago from eating chili, and since then
her allergy has sent her to the emergency room five times and
caused her to jab herself with an anti-allergy injection 11
times, sometimes from just inhaling paprika nearby. 

"It feels like someone poured acid down your throat," she said. 

Fearing a fatal encounter with paprika, Ms. Kysel's parents and
grandparents chipped in to buy her an allergy-detection dog,
which works much like a narcotics-sniffing dog. After she had
extensive talks with her employer, the City of Indianapolis,
officials gave her permission to take the dog to work. The golden
retriever, named Penny, cost her family $10,000 - it jumps up on
Ms. Kysel whenever it detects paprika. 

On the first day Ms. Kysel took Penny to work, one of her
co-workers suffered an asthma attack because she is allergic to
dogs. That afternoon Ms. Kysel was stunned when her boss told her
that she could no longer take the dog to work, or if she felt she
could not report to work without Penny, she could go on
indefinite unpaid leave. She was ineligible for unemployment
compensation because of the limbo she was put in. 

Ms. Kysel filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission < <http://www.eeoc.gov/> http://www.eeoc.gov/> ,
asserting that her employer had discriminated against her by
failing to accommodate her disability. Legal experts say her case
raises tough questions about how to balance the sometimes
clashing interests of co-workers with disabilities and how far
employers need to go to make reasonable accommodations for
workers under the Americans With Disabilities Act. 

"I was crestfallen, angry," Ms. Kysel said. "I thought I had
jumped through all the hoops to get permission, but then it
immediately felt they were favoring this other individual." 

Greg Fehribach, a lawyer for the city, denied that Indianapolis
had violated the law. He said Ms. Kysel's supervisors had gone
far to accommodate her, holding a meeting where she explained her
allergy to her co-workers, and barring employees from eating
foods containing paprika at their desks. Several managers and
co-workers have questioned the seriousness of Ms. Kysel's allergy
- some see it as a quirky, almost laughable oddity. To buttress
her case, two allergists wrote letters saying her allergy was
life threatening. 

While working for the city's Department of Code Enforcement, she
had an attack because the tiny snack bar in her office building
began serving paprika-laden pulled pork. 

One thing that galls Ms. Kysel is that the City of Indianapolis
has barred her from using her service animal at work although it
allows blind employees to have them. 

"I don't think I deserve preferential treatment over anyone," she
said. "But I think I deserve equal treatment." 

Christopher Kuczynski, assistant legal counsel for the Americans
With Disabilities Act division of the equal-employment agency,
declined to comment upon her case because it was pending. 

But in such situations, Mr. Kuczynski said, "what's important
when you have two people with disabilities is you don't treat one
as inherently more important than the other." 

"What the employer has to do," he continued, "is work out some
sort of balance between the accommodations needed."