IT WAS a sick week for several employees of the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) restaurant in the Springs Plaza, St. Andrew, last week as bouts of exposure to carbon monoxide gas forced them to seek medical attention after coming down with nausea, vomiting and runny eyes.
Operations manager for the KFC Restaurants of Jamaica, Donald Baugh, told The Gleaner yesterday that the unfortunate exposures which occurred last Monday and on Friday nights during peak hour sales were "fairly isolated cases".
While it is not yet certain what resulted in the emission of the carbon monoxide it was explained in a release that the restaurant's management has been working closely with several experts from the public and private sectors to identify and correct the cause of the problem.
The carbon monoxide could have possibly come from the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) that was being used in the restaurant, the company said in a release.
Mark Myers, chief executive officer of KFC, said the gas only affected a certain section of the restaurant and only affected employees who worked in that vicinity. "Except for those workers, no other employee in the restaurant or customers using the facility were affected," he emphasised.
A number of short-term measures have since been put in place to deal with the problem. These include discontinuing the use of the gas range, as well as installation of carbon monoxide detectors in the area where there was a build-up of the gas.
The release noted that KFC has been in consultation with representatives of the Kingston and St. Andrew Health Department and the Ministry of Health, as well as Shell and Industrial Gases Limited about the problem and they are also doing their own testing of the gas.
To ensure the safety of its staff and customers, preventative measures will be instituted in restaurants islandwide. These include a possible redesign of the ventilation system and engineers are already looking at the system to ensure that it works as it should.
