Sacramento school lunch lady says working conditions are unbearable with no AC in kitchen
SACRAMENTO – A school lunch lady is claiming that there is no air conditioner inside Valley High School's cafeteria kitchen.
Angela Peterson said she has been working at the Elk Grove Unified School in Sacramento for about two years now.
"I had really bad headaches. I was nauseous. I was profusely sweating, which is unhealthy around food," Peterson said.
Peterson said the heat inside Valley High's cafeteria kitchen is becoming quite literally too hot for her to handle and is keeping her home.
"You walk through those kitchen doors and it's like a sucker punch to you," Peterson said.
Elk Grove Unified confirms it uses evaporative coolers, which are similar to swamp coolers, in its school kitchens, not air conditioning units.
"That school is 50, 60 years old," Peterson said. "It's like they treat it like a low priority."
A new Cal/OSHA regulation helps protect workers like Peterson. It says that anyone working inside buildings greater than 82 degrees must have access to water, cool down stations and be trained on the signs of heat illness.
"It applies to an estimate of about 1.4 million workers in California or about 1 in 8 workplaces," said Senior Industrial Hygienist and Cal/OSHA Enforcement Senior Safety Engineer David Hornung.
Elk Grove Unified said it received a heat ticket on Sept. 9 about the school cafeteria kitchen heat issue. It said it has been working to repair the evaporative cooler since then, for over three weeks now.
"It's never less than 80 to 85 degrees in there," Peterson said.
Drone13 captured the district in action on Wednesday. Crews appeared to be inspecting an air conditioning unit on the roof of the school, but it is unclear which building this was for.
"I love the kids. I love working with food," Peterson said. "I went to culinary school many years ago."
For now, Peterson is sticking to cooking thing up in her home kitchen, unsure if she wants to return to her lunch lady duties serving kids in high temperatures at Valley High.
"I'm completely miserable," Peterson said. "I can't do that. It's not worth my health."