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

[Susan Jones]

Wouldn't it be possible to separate the two sufficiently that the one with
asthma was not affected by the dog?
 

-----Original Message-----
From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Cheryl Osborn
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 2:34 PM
To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users
Subject: Re: [nagdu] When Treating One Worker's Allergy Sets Off Another's

Too bad the paprika lady couldn't have gotten a poodle.  I wonder if a
survey was taken at her place of employment to ask if anyone had an allergy
to dogs.

On 5/11/10, Ginger Kutsch <gingerKutsch at yahoo.com> wrote:
> New York Times
>
> May 10, 2010
>
> When Treating One Worker's Allergy Sets Off Another's
>
> By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
>
> <
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/ste
> ven_greenhouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/stev
> en_greenhouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
>
>
>
> 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."
>
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--
Cheryl in Mexico
chapalacheryl at gmail.com

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