VALLEY FEVER AT PG&E PLANT
My hometown paper has a great little story about construction workers building a plant for Pacific Gas & Electric who have come down with Valley Fever. The Bakersfield Californian says that so far eight workers have gotten the disease, which can sometimes be fatal. And the workers - many who traveled from outside the area to work in the San Joaquin Valley on the PG&E power plant - are ticked off because they can't get worker's comp benefits because they can't prove they were infected at the site.

Let me tell you a little bit about Valley Fever, otherwise known as Coccidioides immitis.

It's one of those weird little things that most people don't know about outside the Central Valley, (which is how locals refer to the San Joaquin Valley.) People usually get it by breathing it in during a dust storm. We had a terrible one when I was in the fourth grade and there was a huge spike in Valley Fever cases that year. People can also get it when there's a lot of earth moved and dust in the air, at say, a construction site.

When I was reading the Germs book a few months ago, I was surprised to learn that Valley Fever was on the shortlist of pathogens the CIA illicitly kept on hand at the Detrick army base for research as a potential biological weapon.

There's a good report available at the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It says in part: "Kern County, in the San Joaquin Valley, California, is one of the most highly coccidioidomycosis-endemic regions."

Bakersfield is the county seat for Kern. Immediately south and west of Kern are Los Angeles and Ventura counties, respectively. They both got a Valley Fever scare after the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. All the aftershocks kept stirring up dust on the hills and mountains, shaking loose long-settled spores. The CDC report said there were 170 acute cases of Valley Fever after the quake in Ventura County.

The CDC also has a cost-analysis study for a Valley Fever vaccine.
- posted by Amy @ 1/06/2002 04:28:00 PM