* Background is here if you need it. If you read this Associated Press story, you’d never know that these unfounded reactions are somewhat common…

Testing to determine the reason two dozen employees at a state prison this week needed medical treatment for dizziness, nausea and vomiting this week has ruled out “narcotics or hazardous materials,” an official said Thursday.

An Illinois State Police hazardous materials team responded Wednesday afternoon to Graham Correctional Center in Hillsboro, 65 miles (105 kilometers) northeast of St. Louis after staff members responding to an inmate “medical incident” were sickened, according to Department of Corrections spokesperson Naomi Puzzello.

And AFSCME also refuses to look beyond its own nose…

In a statement from AFSCME they say:

While we have not yet seen the preliminary State Police report, we are aware of how the Corrections department has characterized it in the media.

Further investigation is needed to explain the very real symptoms that employees experienced.

No one should be lulled into a false sense of security: Potent, dangerous synthetic compounds like fentanyl and others are present in Illinois communities, employees are encountering them in state prisons, and the Department of Corrections must be better prepared to keep safe employees and offenders alike.

IDOC must do more to prevent and prepare for the next such incident that may not be a false alarm. For just one example, steps must be taken to better equip facilities to identify substances in a much shorter timeframe.

* We’ve discussed this before, but let’s take a quick look again. From the New York Times…

For the past five years, I’ve watched a bizarre news cycle play out on repeat. The most recent recurrence began on June 16, when KCTV5, a local news organization in Kansas City, Mo., published police body-camera footage under a dramatic headline: “ ‘I Knew I Was Dying’: How 5 Rounds of Narcan Possibly Saved KCK Police Officer’s Life.” The operative word in that sentence is “possibly.” The footage shows a police officer standing on a snowy lawn in what looks like a suburban neighborhood, wearing sunglasses and disposable gloves, inspecting pills stashed inside a crumpled piece of paper. “Seal it up — that’s fentanyl, dude,” another officer says. “Get that in a bag quick, so we don’t have an exposure.” The time stamp on the video then jumps to five minutes later. The officer who held the pills is now collapsed on the ground, limbs splayed as though making a snow angel. We hear another officer yell, “Narcan, Narcan, Narcan!” The fallen officer gasps rapidly as his fellow officers, with what seems like genuine panic, spray the opioid-overdose antidote up his nose several times.

The officer was taken to a nearby hospital and later released, and, like clockwork, the vivid footage began circulating. But there’s one major problem with all this: It’s nearly impossible for the symptoms depicted to have been caused by “fentanyl exposure.” The scientific literature shows, definitively, that brief contact with fentanyl is not sufficient for it to enter the bloodstream and cross the blood-brain barrier to cause such a rapid overdose. All the way back in 2017, America’s leading toxicological societies noticed the spread of these viral exposure stories and tried to put them to rest; there have since been countless fact-checks and scientific debunkings by major news outlets, including one from The Times’s editorial board. Last month, a 33-year-old clinical toxicologist and emergency-medicine pharmacist named Ryan Feldman co-published a case study about the time he accidentally spilled a mammoth dose of pure liquid fentanyl all over himself at work; he simply washed it off, with no adverse effects.

It’s not that the symptoms seen on video are feigned. Some psychologists suggest a kind of “mass psychogenic illness” is afoot, or a form of conversion disorder — neurological symptoms without a clear physical cause — or, potentially, simple panic attacks. Police officers have been told, by authorities including the Drug Enforcement Administration, that microscopic amounts of fentanyl can be deadly; they are taught to fear this substance. Their bodies may react accordingly, exhibiting symptoms, like rapid breathing, that are indicative of distress and panic. (Fentanyl produces the exact opposite effect; high doses result in slow and shallow breaths.)

National Center for Biotechnology Information…

In line with decades of sensationalistic drug policy coverage (Dasgupta et al., 2018), most mainstream media content on casual exposure-linked overdose fails to include voices of scientific experts, public health officials, and people with lived experience. […]

This is an urgent ethical and public health imperative, as failure to effectively address the spread of misinformation can cost lives and resources. First responders and other witnesses may refuse or delay providing lifesaving help during overdoses. Professional responders report elevated levels of stress, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue; unfounded safety concerns can aggravate these occupational mental health challenges. As opportunistic commercial interests (Harper, 2018) exploit the atmosphere of fear and misinformation, public funds continue to be wasted to address non-existent “biohazard” threats.

* Health & Justice Journal offers up an idea…

Misinformation about overdose risk from accidentally inhaling or touching fentanyl is widespread among police in the United States. This may aggravate already elevated burdens of officer stress and burnout, while chilling lifesaving overdose response. Police education has shown promise in reducing false beliefs about fentanyl. To better understand the potential of training interventions in correcting officer knowledge, we administered a 10-min online training with corrective messaging about occupational overdose risk from fentanyl contact to 204 police officers in Indiana. Overall, 129 officers (63%) completed baseline survey and 69 (34%) completed follow-up instrument. Using a 6-point Likert scale, we documented assent with the statement: “First responders who encounter fentanyl are at great risk of overdose by touching it or inhaling it.” At baseline, 79.8% expressed agreement, while 20.2% disagreed. At follow-up, 39.1% agreed, while 60.9% disagreed (p <  .001). Baseline responses varied in that those officers without a college degree and those on patrol were more likely to report false beliefs. A brief online training intervention holds promise for correcting false beliefs about the risk of fentanyl overdose under circumstances commonly encountered by police.

In other words, IDOC and other law enforcement agencies desperately need to start helping these workers get past the fear that’s been instilled in them, whether by their union, or the FOP, or online or whatever. This misinformation/disinformation hurts those workers and it can be dangerous for actual overdose victims who may not receive prompt care. And, for crying out loud, the Associated Press should try using the Google every now and then.