kea

I worked on Mauna Kea for over five years and saw my health severely degrade during that time. Thetwo long term summit workers that I knew well died of disease conditions, another worker went on tocommit suicide, and others were argumentative.

I saw a guy faint at the W. M. Keck Observatory, he stepped out from the tour group and said to me "I'm feeling sick" and then his eyes rolled back and his knees gave way! The group caught him on his way to the ground and he got free emergency medical oxygen for half an hour before being evacuated off the summit by his tour group!!! His friends stated that he was considered the healthiest person in the group while he was gasping for breaths of life on the summit of Mauna Kea! Never saw him again.

The Mauna Kea night shift was an 18 hour night in wintertime at the 13,796 feet summit (before sunset to after sunrise) with insufficient time for adequate sleep before the next night shift. Night shift was between 5 and 8 nights long and we slept at 9,200 feet. We sat at a desk staring at four large computer monitors and a large cathode ray tube television. I would also use my Wi-Fi laptop computer. I would have extreme fatigue by the end of every night shift and have chapped lips which I now associate with exposure to the artificial light from the computer screens. A good day of sleep between shifts was rare and starting the next shift fatigued was normal.

I regard taking healthy sea level adapted children to the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea as a form of child abuse.

The summit of Mauna Kea should never have been developed as it is not safe for humans up there. I am now locked into an endless loop of doctors visits for what appears to be classic very high altitude heart, lung & brain damage because I was unfortunate enough to have worked there.

At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of workers.

If you are looking for a career that may induce a myriad of health conditions into you, I can recommend working at the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA.

At the age of 45, most days in Tucson were spent feeling like I was on the summit of Mauna Kea, as I was exhibiting debilitating health symptoms that corresponded to what I saw at very high altitude. I was later to find that I had erratic low blood oxygen levels after almost a decade of high altitude work.

One can only wonder what the motivation is for Mauna Kea astronomers to subject their nighttime support staff to extremely long and fatiguing night shifts when they are easily avoidable.

Research suggests that sea level adapted humans that work at the very high altitude 13,796 feet summit of Mauna Kea may eventually develop sleep apnea and fatigue from the low oxygen environment.

During my five years on Mauna Kea, workers routinely displayed the symptoms of Cerebral Hypoxia

Working on the summit of Mauna Kea was comparable to working on the hospital pulmonary ward with sick people sucking on oxygen cylinders.

Oxygen deprivation and supplemental oxygen are both bio-hazards for Mauna Kea workers

When I worked on the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea we were advised to only use the medical oxygen after the daily headaches appeared and that just 15 minutes use was all that was needed to clear up the headaches for a while before we would need it again. We were not advised to use medical oxygen continuously as the Federal Aviation Regulations advises pilots to do. We were not advised to use pulse oximeters to monitor our blood oxygen levels or that the company medical oxygen should have been routinely administered only with our doctors prescription.

A few years after working on Mauna Kea, I discovered that I had radiation sickness

The scandal with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea is how it managed to obtain a construction permit to build a manned telescope in a known biologically toxic environment to workers. How many more people need to die, get injured or develop long term very high altitude sickness that will last a lifetime?

I consider myself fortunate that I spent three years working at 7,775 feet before spending five years working at 13,796 feet on the summit of Mauna Kea. I can only wonder how much more severe my long term very high altitude sickness could have been without the initial adaptation to the lower altitude.

Altitude sickness, unregulated drugs and medical gas enabled workers to become drug abusers/addicts