Some 66 of the 97 officials of the Judiciary who work in the Labor Court building were reported affected with vomiting, diarrhea and headaches, for the possible contamination of drinking water. The situation occurred in the building that is on the north side of the Metropolitan Cathedral in San José.
Mauricio Ondoy, Public Defense official (located in said building), explained that the problem started at the beginning of last week, but nobody paid attention to it.
As of Wednesday, we began to see affected colleagues and we started to suspect from water. By Friday there were several sick colleagues, but the matter worsened during the weekend, when they were in the houses, when most of us were already affected,”
said Ondoy.
Guillermo Flores, director of the South Central Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Health, explained that – apparently – the bad odors and color in the water were perceived last Thursday. However, it was until Monday morning, when the officials themselves called to communicate the situation. The official commented that now they have to wait for the results of analyzes made in the laboratory.
In the inspection that we carried out, it was possible to visualize a water collection tank in the basement of the building near another tank with waste water, which is corroded. It is very likely that this was part of the bad odors and contamination in the drinking water tank,”
said Flores. He also explained that such contamination could have been caused by the proximity of both tanks, by some fracture of the sewage tank or because the drinking water is old, dirty and contaminated with bacteria.
Although the administrators of the building (which is rented by the Judiciary), cleaned the tanks on Monday, it was determined a closure was necessary because there were still sick people.