Top officials at the state health department's lab wrongly orchestrated the widespread destruction of blood test records for lead-poisoned children, even as they knew the documents were being sought by the children's attorneys through court subpoenas or public information requests, according to a report released Friday by the agency's chief investigator.
The report, by Inspector General Thomas V. Russell, portrays the state lab as a place where supervisors felt overwhelmed and badly understaffed, and where the steady requests for blood results submitted by plaintiffs' lawyers fed a growing resentment that eventually prompted the shredding and erasing of records.
While years' worth of paper records were inappropriately shredded earlier this year, the lasting damage appears to be minimal, according to state officials, thanks to computer technicians who managed to recover key information contained in electronic files that had been deleted.
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