CORDELE — Two women working at the Crisp County Health Department are the public’s front-line defense against a wide variety of health threats that affect us every day.
Lisa Leggett and Nephra Daniel serve as the local agency’s environmental health specialists, and they cover everything from food- and mosquito-borne illnesses to sewage management. As if that isn’t enough to fill their workdays, they are also charged with inspecting the county’s many restaurants and tourism accommodations.
Leggett and Daniel have a pretty straightforward approach to tackling the many facets of their job duties.
“Environmental health is about protecting our citizens,” Leggett said.
Those seven words are a mouthful, though.
Among Leggett and Daniel’s many duties, they:
•Inspect every new on-site sewage management system installed in the county as well as repairs made to malfunctioning systems
•Ensure public swimming pools are free of contaminants and other hazardous conditions
•Work to prevent exposure to hazardous chemical substances in the environment
•Work to reduce and prevent childrens’ exposure to lead
•Help monitor mosquito-borne viral diseases that can affect both humans and animals
•Oversee the county’s rabies control program
•Collect water samples for testing as required by state and federal law
•Provide assistance in programs related to indoor air quality, specifically mold infestations
•Assist in a variety of county emergency response and preparedness roles, and
•Regulate and inspect hotels, motels and other tourism accommodations to ensure proper sanitation
One of the most easily identifiable roles that Leggett and Daniel play is seen by anybody who ever eats out in Crisp County’s many restaurants, at least the paperwork they leave behind.
Leggett and Daniel handle restaurant inspections, and that in itself could be a full-time job. It’s one that hasn’t been made any easier by new rules governing restaurants and how they are regulated, although Leggett said both ‘regulators’ and ‘regulated’ are making their way through a learning curve.
“We have an adjustment period we’re going through, and everybody has to learn how the new regulations affect us,” she said.
The state Department of Human Resources adopted the new rules and regulations in February of 2007, but the agency granted a nine-month implementation period, so Leggett and Daniel have been enforcing the new rules since the beginning of last December.
They said the changes in the rules have been “huge,” and that the guidelines swelled from roughly 50 pages to more than 100.
Among the many changes in the regulations are:
•Restaurants are required to have at least one certified food safety manager who can properly demonstrate food safety knowledge
•Multiple new rules governing buffets
•Multiple new rules regarding temperature settings for heating and reheating foods
•Bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat foods is not allowed
•New risk categorization of establishments, with restaurants now earning grades (A, B, C & U) based on the numerical inspection scores.
(Editor’s note: The Dispatch will soon begin publishing inspection scores for Crisp County restaurants. Look for scores on the business page on the last Sunday of every month.)
