SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Police Department's firing range, which is critical for helping to train officers, has been shut down, after several employees there reported elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Police Chief David Nisleit made the call to temporarily shut down the range on May 17th, after staff members raised safety concerns over lead dust in the air.
"The workers who had been there suspected something was wrong for a few months, because they had seen clouds of lead dust come up from the range," said Sgt. Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, which represents the seven officers who work at the range, many of whom suffered from headaches.
Wilson said medical tests revealed they had elevated levels of lead in their blood.
"Overall, they're doing pretty well," Wilson told CBS 8. "The main concern for their health and safety is long-term effects of this."
Firing guns with lead-based ammunition can spread lead vapor and dust.
Exposure to these toxins can lead to a number of health problems, according to medical experts, from nausea and fatigue to organ damage, mental impairment and, in some cases, death.
"Hopefully, they caught this before it really does have long term effects, but obviously we won't know that for a while," Wilson added.
The city confirms that those seven range employees have submitted workers comp claims.
In a statement, a City spokesperson said:
"Mayor Gloria has an unwavering commitment to ensuring all city employees, including our police officers, have safe working conditions. The potential increased lead exposure stems from a new bullet retrieval system that was installed in 2020 and is due to rifle rounds (not pistol) that officers are required to demonstrate proficiency in under POST."
To address the issue, the city will buy a special "dust collector" for $184,000 designed to mitigate the amount of lead particles released into the air, part of $2.7 million earmarked in the new budget to improve the firing range.
An email from a city employee last July, though, questioned why that dust collector wasn't originally part of the design, which the employee calls "a priority," adding "having received violations in February of 2020, I am having a hard time understanding the logic in that decision."
The City said that such a device was not part of the original project because it was identified as "optional" by the manufacturer.
In the meantime, a separate investigation by Cal OSHA is currently underway.
"That process will have to play out, and we will have to trust in the process that we'll discover exactly what happened here," Wilson said.
The city said that the projected re-opening date for the firing range is sometime in October of this year.
Here is the City's full statement:
"Mayor Gloria has an unwavering commitment to ensuring all city employees, including our police officers, have safe working conditions.
The potential increased lead exposure stems from a new bullet retrieval system that was installed in 2020 and is due to rifle rounds (not pistol) that officers are required to demonstrate proficiency in under POST.
Once the Police Chief became aware of this lead exposure, he made the determination to shut down the firing range in order to prevent any additional exposure. After learning about the situation, the Mayor immediately directed the purchase of a dust collector to help mitigate the lead particles into the air. The Mayor anticipates this dust collector to be installed, and the firing range operational, by October.
In addition, it's important to note the Mayor had already allocated $2.7 million worth of improvements to the Department's firing range in this fiscal year's budget.
-David Rolland, Deputy Director of Communications"
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