Hand sanitizer, which most people use in an effort to stay healthy and not become ill, actually turned out to be a severe allergen for one worker who almost lost her ability to work as a result.

Emma Baczuk was a nurse who worked for the Good Samaritan Hospital in New York, making $2,300 a week. In 2009 she developed serious respiratory problems and had to be hospitalized. Turns out she had an allergy to the hand sanitizer she used at work and she applied for workers’ compensation. She was granted those initial benefits. Even after she stopped working and after she got out of the hospital she found that she had a chronic cough triggered just by talking, so it would be difficult for her to go back to her nursing duties. She could not find work that she was able to do that would earn her the same amount as she was making at the hospital. She ended up working part-time as a cashier but was making substantially less, $8 an hour for 20-25 hours of work a week.

A workers’ compensation law judge determined that she had a permanent marked partial disability and was at a 90% loss of wage-earning capacity. The workers’ compensation board agreed and said she should be paid $600 a week for 500 weeks. Her employer, who is self-insured, challenged the workers’ compensation board and said that she should only really be at a 25% loss of wage-earning capacity since there were several other nursing positions in the area that may have paid less but would have replaced at least 75% of her previous wages. The appellate court said that may have been the case but Baczuk could not return to work as a nurse, her chronic cough made that nearly impossible. They held that a loss of 90% wage-earning capacity was correct since she continued to suffer from her injury.