Public health inspectors fulfill a crucial role in educating the public, investigating health-related complaints and inspecting facilities and residences to ensure they comply with public health legislation and regulations. I rode with two environmental health inspectors to see how they did their work.
It's just after 9 a.m. and health inspector Rebecca Johnson is responding to a complaint at a north side residence. After quickly meeting the tenant, we head upstairs to the washroom. There's no hot water and the floor tiles are loose. He also makes mention of continuing problems with a front door lock, which Johnson dutifully inscribes on her clipboard. We drift back downstairs, and Johnson glances at the ceiling. "Where's the smoke alarm?" The tenant shrugs. "There wasn't one when we moved in."
If this were a cop drama, the scenario would be Johnson's current beat – helping to mediate between landlord and tenant, checking for building code violations and inspecting environmental health problems.
Walking back to her car, Johnson explains that a friendly call to the landlord should fix the problem. "We don't go in with the big guns right away," she notes. "It's an escalating action; the first step is always to deal in a reasonable manner." In this particular case, Johnson's office has dealt with the landlord before and she doesn't seem to think that there will be any trouble.
10:15 a.m. Next stop is a gently decaying apartment block seemingly frozen in the 1970s. We're there to check out a bedbug complaint – the pesky, blood-drinking creatures that feast on humans at nighttime. They have become an increasing problem in the city recently.
Johnson tries the buzzer a few times, and eventually someone in the front waiting area lets us in. A woman stands in a bathrobe watching us while her cats run in and out of the apartment. The building is divided in a slightly confusing way, so Johnson asks her for directions; the woman helpfully points us down the wrong corridor.
There's seemingly no one home when we eventually find the apartment. "We know that the wife is usually around, but she doesn't speak English, so she may not answer," Johnson explains. Today is a lost cause; repeated knocking only gets a querulous, "Are you following me?" from a voice in the nearby stairwell.
Johnson will have to return at a later date. "You don't think of Edmonton as having bedbugs, but we do," she says as we leave the building. "I remember when I first started working at the job being surprised by it."
11:00 a.m. We cross the river to an unfinished south side rooming house. Johnson is there as part of the Safe Housing Committee, a venture that encourages landlords of low-income buildings to economically upgrade to safety codes. Other inspectors are already gathered at the side door, waiting to be admitted. Once in, Johnson heads upstairs to check out the washroom. She points out the carpet. "Not a good idea," she half laughs, shaking her head. "Can you imagine cleaning this?" She pulls at windows in the upstairs kitchen to make sure that they open, and swings down to the basement to look at the furnace with the other inspectors.
Outside she walks to the side of the house and pulls out a measuring tape – the landlords haven't corrected the window size since last inspection. "We'll write them a letter and give them a time frame in which to get it done," Johnson explains.
1:00 p.m. At the Old Jasper Place building, Nyall Hislop pulls out a binder of evidence from a court case he had a few years back. There are photographs of a downtown restaurant grim enough to turn your stomach – raw poultry hanging at room temperature, chopping boards covered in filth, an entire back area that looks like it was deliberately painted in grime.
"A photo is worth a thousand words," he says. "All we have to do is lay these out as evidence and there's no chance the decision to close the restaurant will be contested." Hislop's beat is restaurants, bakeries and the like – any commercial enterprise where food is stored. Armed with a Bachelor of Science degree, Hislop originally intended to take further graduate studies but found that he enjoyed the diversity of work in his new job. He's investigated countless food poisoning cases and a few salmonella scares, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
2:00 p.m. First stop is a homey little bakery/café just off downtown. After waving to the owner, Hislop swings around the counter; the first thing he notices is an expired licence hanging to the side of the sink. "I know for a fact that he has the new one – it's probably up in his office." A quick check with the owner, who is bringing out plates of pasta, confirms this is the case. At Hislop's direction he brings it out to hang for public display. Meanwhile, Hislop looks around the kitchen area. "It's after the lunch rush, so a bit of spillage is to be expected," he cautions. "It's the buildup of dirt that we're looking for." He pulls out a small device and checks the coolers for correct temperature, noses around the cupboards to make sure that foodstuffs are being kept separate from each other and non-food items. Everything is in order – other than a few minor problems, Hislop is quick to praise the owner for the cleanliness of his storage area. Not all establishments are like this, however.
"When I bring students to certain places I have to say 'we only have 90 seconds to do this.' The moment that they see us, the staff will be scrambling to put things away. It's amazing the effort they put into it when that effort could be put into just keeping up with the regulations."
Before leaving he runs the tap and checks the water temperature. "It's an old habit," he smiles. "Usually, when a place is in financial trouble, the first thing they do is shut off the hot water."
3:00 p.m. We pull up to the Food Bank, a huge concrete warehouse with the seemingly impossible job of feeding over 20,000 people a month. "If you look at their infrastructure, it's a recipe for disaster," Hislop says as we walk in. "It shouldn't work, but it does; that's because the people in charge are really good at their jobs."
Inside are huge shelves and metal bins – newly wrought barriers against enemy mice – full of dry goods like cereals and pasta. Considering the amount of bad produce donated, Hislop's job here is a little harder, and he depends on the experience of the staff. "People seem to think that poor folks will eat anything, no matter how rotted or past the due date it is," he comments. Everything is neatly separated to Hislop's satisfaction, and the manager is quick to apprise him of continuing efforts to keep with code. He waves us over to the back area, and points at the garbage bin, which looks like it's swimming in slush. "Somebody thought it would be a great idea to empty out a bin full of expired fruit juices and chocolate milk so that they could get the deposit on the tetra packs," he sighs.
- Tom Murray
Your Health Magazine - March/April, 2006 Issue
Disclaimer
Reviewed by Alberta clinical experts. Brought to you by HealthLink Alberta. Copyright.
This material is designed for information purposes only. It should not be used in place of medical advice, instruction and/or treatment. For more health advice call Capital Health Link at 780-408-LINK (5465) 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In Alberta, call Toll-free: 1-866-408-LINK (5465)
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