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'No need for alarm' on TB tests
Tuesday, August 04, 2009 Huntsville Times
By David BrewerTimes Staff Writer
30 workers will be tested again after positive results
ALBERTVILLE - More than 30 local poultry workers who recently tested positive for latent tuberculosis will receive additional testing Thursday, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health said Monday.
On July 24, company and state Health Department officials began testing 60 employees at [a poultry plant] in Albertville after being notified that a male worker had been diagnosed with active TB.
But there's "no need for alarm," said Pam Barrett, director of the Health Department's Division of TB Control. "This one is an isolated case."
*snip*
After conducting an environmental assessment of the plant, which has about 1,000 workers, health officials administered skin tests to 60 whom it had determined were in the area of the infected man, Barrett said. Of those 60, she said, 31 tested positive for latent tuberculosis and are to undergo additional testing that includes chest X-rays and blood tests. Latent tuberculosis is not infectious, although it can eventually develop into active TB in a few cases...
Neither Barrett nor D'Addieco could name or describe the job of the man who was diagnosed with active TB or whether he handled any of the company's poultry products.
"But it doesn't matter," Barrett said. TB is "not transmitted that way."