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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1982-03-08320 BOARD OF HEALTH MEETING March 8, 1982 The regular meeting of the Board of Health was held Monday, March 8, 1982. Members present were: Mr. James W. Lambie, Chairman; Dr. Michael S. Erdos, Linda Roemer, Ph.D., and George A. Smith, Director of Public Health. The minutes of the February 8, 1982 meeting were approved as read. 1 Mr. Smith reported to the Board that we had received a letter from the State INFLUENZA Health Department notifying us that they will not be supplying the free in- VACCINE fluenza vaccine to the cities and towns this year because of cutbacks in CLINIC their budget. Mr. Smith said that the State may notify us that they have contracted with a company that the cities and towns could purchase the vaccine from a cheaper rate. The Board discussed whether we should charge a fee from now on for the flu vaccine clinic. Mr. Smith said we are one of the few towns left that do not charge and he feels that the elderly would not mind paying a fee of two or three dollars. Mr. Lambie asked if we did charge would it reduce the number of people that would attend? Dr. Erdos did not think charging a small fee would reduce the number of people coming and he doesn't think they mind paying a small fee. Mr. Smith told the Board that there is enough money in the budget at this time to purchase the vaccine for the Fall clinic. The Board decided to put the decision on hold for the present time until the State notifies this Department what the final status will be with the vaccine. 1 Mr. Smith told the Board he had been notified by the State there was an F.D.A. RECALL ON recall on cans of salmon involving certain code K-13 on the can. He went to SALMON all the markets in town for a check but no store in this town had any tins with that particular code number. A letter has been received from Dr. Nicholas Fiumara of the Mass. Department of Public Health, Division of Communicable Diseases, that in cooperation with the SEROSURVEY Center for Disease Control, they are going to do a State-wide study of immunity levels for certain vaccine preventable diseases among school-age children. The school chosen in this town for the study to take place is Lexington High School, grade 12. The study will determine whether the immunity levels of students with incomplete records (defined as a check mark or year only of vaccination) are lower than the immunity levels of students with complete records (defined as a month, day and year of vaccination). 1 1 1 1 321 It was stated if the immunity levels of the former group are significantly lower than levels of the latter group, the policy can be changed to allow only students with complete records to attend school. At 8:00 p.m. Mr. Charles Eldred, partner of Corey's of Lexington came before MR. CHARLES the Board at their invitation to meet and discuss the new restaurant that will ELDRED, CORE) be opening in town around May 1st. 20 WALTHAM S7 Mr. Eldred explained that he has been in the restaurant business since 1968 and has built and ran other restaurants. The other one he owns and operates at the present time is Corey's of Dedham. Mr. Eldred told the Board how has gutted out the inside of the building and started anew, renovating the outside, etc. He answered any questions the Board asked in regard to where the food would be cooked, questions in regard to the salad bars, ventilation, and seating capacity, and rubbish disposal, etc. He told the Board that he deals strictly with all "fresh" foods with the ex- ception of shrimp that he purchases frozen. Mr. Smith asked about his dishwashing machine. Mr. Eldred said he has rented a "low temperature" type machine. Mr. Smith said he doesn't like to see the "low temperature" machines in res- taurants as he does not feel they are as good as the other type machine but he said "we will see". After further discussion, Mr. Eldred thanked the Board and retired. Mr. Smith told the Board that the State had sent notice after a completion SURVEY of a survey that there had not been a case of measles in Lexington since 1965 that they are aware of. We do not have a complete record because the parents are not obligated to state what their child is out of school for. They only have to state that the child had been ill. Mr. Smith reported that a resident had called and complained about a sign DMSO in the window at the Colonial Pharmacy that they had DMSO for sale. Mr. Smith said that the label on the bottles of DMSO states that it is for laboratory use only. He said the use of DMSO in Europe is wide -spread but it is nothing more than an "industrial solvent". Mr. Smith said he feels someone should come forward and testify that they had been given instructions on how to use it. Dr. Erdos thinks we should wait for something specific on this. He said he will look into this through the pharmacy at the hospital. It was decided to table this DMSO subject and bring it up at the next meeting. q")146,...4 FITZGERALD'S Nothing more to report to the Board about the Fitzgerald's horses, Mr. HORSES Smith said. 10 BLOSSOM STREET ILLEGAL MEAT TRUCKS HEALTH FAIR The Board wants to check the property out and decided to go on Tuesday all together at 4:00 p.m. to look the situation over. Mr. Smith said he had been called to 10 Blossom Street because of an oil leak in the cellar. A line in the oil burner broke and the oil was all over the cellar floor. The serviceman was called and the problem was taken care of. While Mr. Smith was there a van pulled up and about 20 Chinese people got out that were living there. Mr. Smith said this is a single family house and the men were sleeping just everywhere in this house. This property is owned by Chester Chi, owner of the Peking Gardens Restaurant. Mr. Smith told the Board that he had written Chester a letter today telling him to either get a license for a lodging house or reduce the number of people living there to four. Mr. Smith told the Board that there has been a couple of little trucks going around town peddling meat and fish illegally because they are suppose to have a "Hawkers and Peddlers" license, a fish and game license and a license from the Board of Health. He said that the policemen and firemen have been buying these products from the trucks and have since complained about the short weight of the boxes. Mr. Smith has not been able to catch up with them as yet but he did tell the police to keep their eyes open for them. Mr. Smith also talked to the "Sealer of Weights and Measures" about this because the packages are not marked with the weight. Mr. Smith told the Board that the Town's health fair will be on May 15th from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Anne Scigliano of Symmes is really pitching in and coordinating the whole fair. The Board discussed the new Genetic Research Lab. Collaborative Research that is now located at 128 Spring Street in Lexington. Mr. Smith and Mr. Lambie had been invited over to view the new facilities. (Office and Lab. in Waltham) Collaborative Research said they do not plan to do any D & A work in Lex- ington at this time. Mr. Lambie explained briefly the work at the human cell Lab. (enzines) in regard to blood clots. Mr. Smith explained that the Lexington facilities will be doing research with rabbits and mice and they have applied for a permit to keep these on the premises. The Board discussed this further with Dr. Erdos asking if Lexington has their own regulations, would we eventually go before the Board of Selectmen with this, and also stated that the Board of Health should review what is available to make up the best regulations that can be found for this Town in regard to this research facility. 32 Mr. Smith stated he has written to N.I.H. for their guidelines and also to several other cities and towns including Cambridge. Dr. Roemer said when we receive all the regulations and guidelines avail- able we can review them and come up with our own set of regulations for this town. Mr. Smith reported that he had gone to a meeting with the League of Women Voters, Chief John Bergeron of the Fire Department, Wally Tonaszuck, Direc- tor of Public Works and Cliffe Prentiss of the Conservation Department, on March 4, 1982 in regard to hazardous waste. Mr. Smith had sent an article to Wally Tonaszuck and had sent the same article to the local paper in regard to disposing of hazardous waste from private homes. Joan Clark of the League of Women Voters was interested in what could be done with it. The Board discussed what part the town agencies played in this and how to dispose of it. Mr. Smith said private disposal companies what $150.00 to carry it away. The Board discussed having different areas in Town to drop it off at and then have it taken away from there. The P.W.D. trucks cannot do that in Town because certain permits are required. It has to be dumped at a State approved facility. The State said it can can be thrown in a landfill if a town has one. What basically was discussed at the meeting at the fire station with the league of Women Voters was ways that the hazardous wastes from private homes could legitimately be disposed of and just how costly would it be. Mr. Smith told the Board that he would be going to another meeting in a couple of weeks to discuss this further and maybe could find some way to dispose of this that would be worth pursuing. The following permits were signed by the Board: Hotel/Motel Licenses Sheraton -Lexington Motor Inn 727 Marrett Rd. Rubbish Disposal Wellesley Trucking Service, Inc. P.O. Box 166, Wellesley, Mass. Animal Permits Antonio R. Leyenaar 24 chickens 2 Paul Revere Rd. Barbara H. Findley 10 laying hens 76 Middle St. 394 Methyl Alcohol License Joseph Devanney d/b/a Lil Peach 1719 Mass. Ave. Mobile Server Permit Ben Freitas Mobile Server 321 Woburn St., Lexington Food Establishment Permits New England Vending for Varian Associates 121 Hartwell Ave. Cory's of Lexington, Inc. 20 Waltham St. Lexington, Mass. Lexington Knights of Columbus 177 Bedford St. ARA Coffee Systems for Data Resources (vending) 83 Hartwell Ave. ARA Coffee Systems for Data Resources (vending) 29 Hartwell Ave. Lexington Lodge of Elks 959 Waltham St. Lexington Veterans of Foreign Wars 2 Hayes Lane Joseph Devanney d/b/a Lil Peach 1719 Mass. Ave. M.N.B. Vending, Inc. for T.M.I. Systems 83 Hartwell Ave. Lexington Hall Convalescent & Retirement Center 178 Lowell St. Rainbow Food Store (formerly White Hen Pantry) 373 Mass. Ave. 1 Board of Health Meeting April 12, 1982 DNA The Board discussed the DNA Research of Collaborative Research Lab. at 128 Spring Street. They siad they will have to come up with regulations and will have to do it soon and come up with a strategy to enforce them which would be difficult. First, either the Board or someone else has to make a judgement of the risk involved. These companies can give us all the information in the world but we have to have a process or criteria involving people that understand it. We need outside expertise. The Board said we have to develop our own regulations within the Town and then get a system to enforce them. We will have to decide if, we as a Board, should put together regulations or should we appoint a committee. After regulations are completed, the Board will have to meet with the Town Manager but Mr. Smith said the Town Manager thinks it should stay with the Board of Health. The Board will have to decide on the decisions and recom- mendations to make and then they should talk to the Board of Selectmen and the Town Manager. The institutions have monitoring groups but they are controlled by the in- stitutions. How the Town itself can have some assurance the institutions is going to do a good job is by having "overseers" and also have bonds and penalties. Lay people can walk through those labs and not be aware of the horrendous stuff going on or it could be totally benign, you just don't know. Whoever gets the duty will have to draft regulations and procedures. Collaborative Research has sent a letter to Mr. Busa, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, stating that they did their research in Waltham and have no immediate plans to bring it to Lexington but if the Town develops regula- tions they would like the option to bring research into Lexington. Mr. Lambie said he had checked out the zoning -by-laws. They do allow in certain areas laboratory experimental projects, chemistry, and electronics in certain zones but they need special permits from the "granting authority" which in these cases would be the Board of Appeals. Mr. Smith said that we have W. R. Grace Co., Lincoln Lab. and the E.P.A. that could be doing DNA Research in their building and we'd have no way of knowing. There could be any number of weird things going on in these build- ings. Mr. Lambie mentioned that it occurred to him that to go through this drille it is going to take a lot of people and time on someone's part to investigate this. These research labs. are not here at this time and it may be three or four years before they do but in the meantime, we should be in the process of setting up regulations ready and the zoning -by-laws and at the time we could always have the Board of Appeals extend the 90 -day waiting period. 325 Mr. Smith thinks that Collaborative Research would like to do research now in Lexington because they are pressed for space in their Waltham facilities. The Board said it would be nice to come up soon with regulations and run them through the Board of Appeals and the Planning Board. They should be put in writing so that all Town boards will become aware that they will become Town policy. Mr. Smith said either do it that way or bring it center -stage before Town meeting. He said it can be handled legitimately and legally under the auspices of the Board of Health and Mr. Smith thinks that is where it should be. Mr. Smith said that he would like Dr. Erdos and Debbie Chiklis, Health Intern, to take the tour of the Lab. The Board discussed again how they really did not know just what the Lab. is doing and that it would be very difficult to police these labs. This research business is a very competitive thing and each lab keeps every- thing secretive because they want to be the first one in research projects. The members of the Board decided to put off discussion for one month but they feel it should not be put off any longer than that. 1 1