DCist highlights the news that former “Top Chef” contestant–and champion of hats–Spike Mendelsohn was on the receiving end of a stern DOH inspection. Spike’s much-hyped (deserved?) Cap. Hill burger joint, Good Stuff Eatery was cited for several issues, according to a WTOP report.

Violations, the story says, included storing beef in the alley behind the restaurant. Here’s part of the account, judge for yourself who’s winning the spin war!

“When WTOP asked Mendelsohn about the health code violations, he said the health inspector didn’t actually see any problems.

“The health inspector never came in and saw violations,” Mendelsohn, 27, says. “It was just a neighbor that was being difficult that had taken a picture right when we get our delivery in the morning. They didn’t find meat in the back alley.”

But a Sept. 4, 2008 D.C. Department of Health inspection report shows an inspector found raw meat in the same location.”

How’s this name for a city department head? Dr. Pierre Vigilance will take over the health department, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced today.

Vigilance comes from the Baltimore County, Maryland, heath department, where he’s been director since 2005. He holds an M.D. and master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins, and he has D.C. ties, too, having gone to college at GW and his medical residency at Howard.

The man still has to be approved by the D.C. Council, but in a good sign, At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania—the health committee chair and de facto D.C. health czar—just issued a press release saying he’s “encouraged” by the nomination.

From the release: “The Mayor and his team deserve a lot of credit for the manner in which they conducted this search,” said Catania. “The process was deliberate but quick, which was necessary given the importance of the position to the city’s healthcare system.”

At a press conference this morning, Fenty namechecked all the issues Vigilance is to tackle—childhood obesity, lead poisoning, infant mortality, et al.

On the obesity issue, Vigilance says he speaks from experience: Looking svelte in a tailored suit, he recounted how he weighed as much as 250 pounds during his residency at Howard: “How can you be speaking about health and health issues if you aren’t willing to make some of these own changes?”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

This past week, I had the pleasure of visiting Hart Middle School’s newly renovated library. It was a nice and bright place. But it was also pretty empty of books. Many of the shelves were not close to full. In early November, the school tossed most of its books into a pair of dumpsters. The school’s principal claimed the books were too old.

The school’s librarian, Martin Ezeagu, took it a step further claiming that those old paperbacks were extreme health hazards. He told me that every time he touches them, he must wash his hands. He then demonstrated how he washes his hands in a sink located behind the tiny reference section.

But he said sometimes even warm water and soap wouldn’t save him from that dog-eared copy of Invisible Man. Ezeagu told me: “Some of the books are so old they cause cancer.”

So is the Library of Congress just a giant cancer factory? Are old books as unhealthy as cigarettes? Or is this just some DCPS myth?

On Sept. 28, the attorney general’s office charged Dr. Charles Hall with 18 counts of defrauding the city. Hall, medical director for the Department of Health’s Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA), was accused of essentially double-billing hours for that job and a position with the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency on 18 separate occasions from 2004 to 2006, making off with more than $12,000.

In a press release, Attorney General Linda Singer said that Hall “took advantage of the government and the taxpayers.”

Wrong tense, Linda: Hall is still on the job, three weeks after the charges came down.

An APRA employee says that Hall was back on the job the Monday after the charges were announced and that he has been involved in the day-to-day operations of the agency’s D.C. General campus detox clinic as recently as last week, phoning in orders from APRA headquarters on First Street NE.

Yes, LL is aware of that “innocent until proven guilty” maxim of American jurisprudence, but under the District’s employment regulations, agencies are empowered to place on leave employees who have “been indicted on, arrested for, or convicted of any crime…that bears a relationship to his or her position.”

Hall, who’s worked for the District since 1991 and currently draws a salary of $147,000, did not respond to a message LL left on his office phone. On several occasions last week, an APRA receptionist told LL that Hall was in a meeting; this week, a receptionist said Hall was “traveling.”

The health department did not respond to LL’s inquiries about Hall by press time; that might have something to do with Director Gregg A. Pane getting shitcanned late last week. Mayoral spokesperson Carrie Brooks confirmed that Hall is still on the city payroll.

Singer is none too happy with Hall’s continuing employment. “We are very concerned by this situation, and our office has contacted APRA to provide any assistance they might need,” says Melissa Merz, Singer’s spokesperson.

The D.C. Department of Health has issued a health alert following a voluntary recall by the Campbell Soup Company of more than 72,000 cans of its Chunky soup.

The recall involves cans of Chunky Baked Potato with Cheddar and Bacon Bits. And not just ’cause this soup takes like shit. The soup is extra super chunky and may contain of hard plastic “that presents a choking hazard and could cause injury if swallowed,” according to the alert. So far three consumers have reported minor injuries “in and around their mouths.”

No word yet on how the plastic got into the soup, or how Campbell manages to sell 72,000 cans of this stuff when there’s no hard plastic in the recipe.

At 1:30 p.m. yesterday, DJ Mac was rocking out. Sandwiched between two speakers on the plaza outside the D.C. Department of Health, he blasted Parliament and . “Old school stuff,” he said. “Hand-dancing music.”

Hand dancing, D.J. Mac said, is what they do on TV. (For a brief history of D.C.’s relationship to hand-dancing, go here). “You’ve got all this wild dancing, but hand dancing makes two people one,” he mused.

Perhaps, but hand-dancing also just makes people move, and that’s the point. Erica Thomas, a program manager with the Department of Health, says yesterday’s show was the second installment of Wellness Wednesdays, an effort to get agency employees up, out, and exercising. “We were trying to find a different form of fun physical activity for Department of Health employees,” she says.

So, starting Sept. 12, and through Oct. 31, the Department of Health is sponsoring music and hand-dancing from 12-2p.m. every Wednesday.

“This is sort of a pilot to see if everyone likes it,” she says. If the response is positive, they’ll keep it going, maybe even expand it. During the winter, she says, the department might offer belly-dancing, yoga, and Tai-Chi at a gym inside the government building.

But despite DJ Mac’s best efforts, the workers perched on the plaza yesterday were practically motionless. The most he could get was a foot tap. That came from Joseph, an employee with the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. “That’s my era,” he said of the Intruders. “I actually listened to them coming in this morning.”

A few suggested confirmation-hearing questions for Department of Human Services director-designee Clarence Carter:

• Let me ask you something: What time of the day do you like to overhaul a beleaguered social-service agency?
• Have you ever overhauled a beleaguered social-service agency just before breakfast?
• Have you ever overhauled a beleaguered social-service agency while you watched the late, late show?
• Well, let me ask you this: Have you ever overhauled a beleaguered social-service agency on a couch?
• Well, let me ask you this: Have you ever overhauled a beleaguered social-service agency on the back seat of a car?
• How long has it been since you overhauled a beleaguered social-service agency, huh?
• Did you overhaul a beleaguered social-service agency yesterday?
• Did you overhaul a beleaguered social-service agency last week?
• Did you overhaul a beleaguered social-service agency last year?
• Or maybe it might be that you plannin’ on overhaulin’ a beleaguered social-service agency tonight?
• But just remember, when you start overhaulin’ a beleaguered social-service agency, you make it hard, long, soft, short…

Tired of the Fenty administration? Longing for a leader with a bit of hair and maybe a bowtie?

Then cruise over to the Department of Health’s Web site.

Who is that man up in the right-hand corner?

When the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation released new rules [PDF] for establishing dog parks earlier this month, one provision struck dog lovers as absurd: Before a site can be approved for a dog park, the sponsoring group must get the Department of Health’s certification that the area is rat-free “for a distance of five (5) blocks.”

The rules were written by a task force consisting of several city agencies; according to Parks and Rec spokesperson Regina Williams, the rat rule was included at the behest of the Department of Health. “That was one of the guidelines that they wanted to have,” Williams says.

Now, however, the rule is being called impractical by…the Department of Health.

An agency attorney and rodent-control honcho consulted about the proposal both “agree that it would be nearly impossible for [the health department] to verify that a five-block area was rodent-free,” concedes Peggy Keller, chief of the Bureau of Community Hygiene, in an e-mail.

That bit of common sense comes as no surprise to dog advocates. Mindy Moretti, an Adams Morgan advisory neighborhood commissioner and president of Friends of Walter Pierce Park—which has a designated dog area—says the rule is poop.

“As that regulation is written, it will be next to impossible to have dog parks anywhere in the District of Columbia, let alone Ward 1,” Moretti says. “Rock Creek Park is full of rats. It’s a city, there’s rats….It’s absolutely impossible.”

Due to the uproar over the new rules, Parks and Rec has extended the public comment period to May 1.

These days, the District’s Department of Health is calling around town in search of heads of households to complete its “Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System” questionnaire. Just about all of the questions posed to the man or woman of the house are standard health-survey stuff. For example: “Have you ever been told by a doctor that you have diabetes?” or “How many of your permanent teeth have been removed because of tooth decay or gum disease?” Then, deep into the survey, the questioner pops this oddball: “A bidi is a flavored cigarette from India. Have you ever smoked a bidi, even one or two puffs?”

That’s a strange inquiry for the ranking folks in any domicile. Bidis—hand-rolled cigarettes that come in mango, chocolate, and mint, among other sweet flavors—have long been the puffing province of urban youth. A 1999 study, for instance, found that of 642 teenagers in Boston, 40 percent reported having smoked a bidi. Somewhere between chemistry class and their first apartment, though, most folks tend to bag bidis in favor of common cigarettes or fresh air.

But D.C. health wonks just want to be sure. After all, says Health Department spokesperson Leila Abrar, bidi smokers often don’t consider the product harmful, despite its high tar levels. So the Health Department added the bidi question to this year’s survey “to determine the use of bidis among adults in the city.”