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NORTH SALT LAKE — Hazardous materials crews and health department officials are investigating the sudden illness of 26 employees at a law office and call center Tuesday.
The incident at Lexington Law Firm, 360 N. Cutler Drive, is not being called a hazmat situation, though, as chemical detectors ruled out anything that could cause such illnesses, said Jeff Bassett, deputy fire chief with South Davis Metro Fire.
"We're at a loss as to what's happened," Bassett said. "We know everything is safe. We just need to figure out what happened here today."
About 8:15 a.m., South Davis Metro Fire crews were called to the law office, where several employees were complaining of flu-like symptoms — nausea, vomiting and dizziness. Two of the people were throwing up, Bassett said.
Crews evacuated the building, treated those who were sick and began searching for possible causes. They ruled out carbon monoxide poisoning, as well as as type of gas leak or Freon leak in the air-conditioning units.
Nine people were taken to Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful after being examined by medical personnel. As of 2:45 p.m., all of those patients have been treated and released, according to a news release from the hospital.
"There's nothing indicating a chemical or hazardous material affecting them," Bassett said.
All of the sick employees are being interviewed about possible causes of the illness, such as whether the group had a meal together.
"This could be two people who have the flu, and then it snowballed into everyone else not feeling well," Bassett said.
The illness was isolated to the second-floor call center on the east side of the building. Fire officials expected that employees who did not get sick would return to work in the building Tuesday afternoon.
No other buildings in the area were evacuated.
"We did air monitoring around the building, and there was nothing here that would cause any type of urgency or any type of panic to evacuate anybody," Bassett said.
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Story written by Jared Page with contributions from Sandra Yi.
