stock<\/a> in SpaceX, a potentially lucrative benefit as the company is preparing to list on the stock market with an over $1 trillion valuation.<\/p>\n\u201cI loved that job \u2014 it was the best experience of my life,\u201d Kiss said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the same time, it was the worst experience of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Starlink-Building--1-.jpg\")
The Starlink satellite production facility is based in Redmond, Washington. Workers there have created over 7,000 low-Earth orbiting satellites that provide global internet service, particularly for rural areas. (Aspen Ford\/InvestigateWest)<\/p>\n
The customer support office is in a commercial building across the street from the rest of SpaceX\u2019s campus. The 30,000-square-foot building includes five other businesses: a pediatric clinic, cable manufacturer, pediatric dentistry, mortgage lender and holistic medical clinic, all of which share a common hallway and bathroom with SpaceX employees.<\/p>\n
Kiss didn\u2019t anticipate that working in the customer support hub could potentially expose her to dangerous chemicals. None of the customer support employees were given protective equipment. Yet from 2023 to 2025, she and other customer support employees say the door to the Starshield lab was frequently propped open, allowing the air to flow directly into the employee break room and customer support office.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not good practice to leave those doors open to non-industrial areas,\u201d said Kevin Milani, an industrial hygienist who previously worked for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. \u201cAny industrial area should have its own separate ventilation and definitely be closed off to break areas. Those are supposed to be safe places for employees where they can go and enjoy their food and not have to worry about being exposed to something.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Technicians in the lab wore personal protective equipment and used toxic adhesives and solvents on electronic navigation systems that would later guide satellites, and they cured parts in an industrial oven, records show. In a second lab adjacent to the customer support room, workers used a tin-lead alloy to join wires onto circuit boards. While lead soldering is rare in most industrial applications because less toxic alternatives are available, it\u2019s still used in aerospace because it\u2019s less prone to cracking under heat stress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This type of work requires specialized equipment to filter the air for workers exposed to fumes and lead-laden dust. Yet records show the company\u2019s own safety team voiced concerns about inadequate ventilation in the lab, long before customer support employees began reporting health issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first complaint came in October 2023, when one safety manager reported the soldering lab had \u201cno proper ventilation.\u201d A month later, another manager noted in a SpaceX safety portal that the air circulation in the Starshield lab was \u201cnot sufficient\u201d and that the door was kept open to let out heat from a thermal oven.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Milani said that proper ventilation would require at least a fume extractor, a device that protects workers from inhaling toxic lead particles. More than a year after the report, there was still no fume extractor in place in either lab, according to state inspection files.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Customer-Suppport-Diagram.png\")
A map drawn by Washington Department of Labor & Industries industrial hygiene officer Richard Caldwell depicts, on the left, the Redmond office where customer support employees worked and adjacent rooms in the commercial building where technicians used leaded solder and hazardous chemicals that require special equipment to protect workers from fumes. <\/p>\n
There were other signs the facility was ill-equipped: SpaceX safety management found the soldering room lacked waste containers and storage for chemicals, and every fire extinguisher in the building was expired.<\/p>\n
Despite these internal flags, work continued as normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Health issues begin<\/p>\n
By February 2024, customer support employees began reporting health issues.<\/p>\n
That month, Kiss told a customer support manager in a Microsoft Teams message that the air was dry and employees were experiencing itchiness and redness in their eyes and requested a humidifier, according to the state\u2019s inspection records. The manager\u00a0never replied.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another employee told InvestigateWest they constantly raised questions about the headaches people were getting and requested that the carpets be cleaned. That employee spoke to InvestigateWest on the condition of anonymity and said that upper management moved their office to the other side of the building, the farthest away from the lab, but there were no modifications for the customer support employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely felt dizzy after work, and I wasn\u2019t sure why,\u201d the former employee said. “(The lab) needed to not be in that building at all.”<\/p>\n
L&I began investigating the chemical exposure in November 2024, after Altshuler went to the doctor for a swollen eye. Altshuler did not respond to InvestigateWest\u2019s inquiries, and his attorneys declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, employee complaints were piling up in SpaceX\u2019s safety portal, records from L&I show.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese past few weeks my coworkers and I have been getting medical side effects working in our building,\u201d one customer support employee wrote. \u201cHeadaches, eye irritations, eye swelling, eye twitching. \u2026 This week the medical side (effects) are increasing with no solution in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another said, \u201cManagement is aware of this, as well as HR and yet we are not being accommodated.\u201d<\/p>\n
One customer support employee reported eye irritation \u201cdue to a vent above their desk.\u201d Management reportedly told the employee to take sick leave, according to another safety report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A lab worker tagged a customer support manager in an internal complaint demanding that SpaceX install a local exhaust system to prevent vapors from \u201cdispersing into the rest\u201d of the office, but the manager didn\u2019t offer any accommodations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That same week in November, a health and safety manager again reported that several benches inside the lab had soldering equipment, yet there were still no fume extractors or containers for lead and other hazardous waste. It had been over a year since the issue had first been reported.<\/p>\n
The inspection<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s inspection was scheduled for Dec. 17, 2024, a month after L&I opened the investigation. SpaceX chose the date and L&I agreed. The inspector informed Haley Laing, a former SpaceX safety manager, how the sampling to test for chemical exposure would take place. Three customer support employees and three Starshield lab technicians would wear air pumping devices for eight hours to determine the level of certain contaminants they could be breathing in.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not enough time to properly test for an exposure, Milani said. Instead of one snapshot of eight hours, exposure assessments should involve \u201cmultiple days of testing,\u201d he said. That will give a \u201cbetter picture of what an exposure actually looks like.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
After knowing since October 2023 that there were concerns from their own safety team, SpaceX management only took action to improve the lab\u2019s ventilation in the days leading up to the inspection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to notes from state regulators, after they opened the investigation, SpaceX installed three fume extractors with carbon filters in the Starshield and soldering labs. Former employees say the safety team also inspected the ceiling and deep cleaned the area.<\/p>\n
Those ventilation measures were in place by the time the state inspector showed up to test for sampling.<\/p>\n
The day of sampling, L&I performed a screening test for common contaminants and lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All sampling results came back below regulatory limits, except for surface samples that were taken near the soldering station. L&I found lead in a concentration 18 times greater than the state or federal government allows.<\/p>\n
In February 2025, L&I cited SpaceX for the lead exceedance, amounting to a $6,000 fine. It also issued a violation for failing to conduct an employee exposure test for airborne contaminants, but because L&I performed testing, SpaceX avoided a fine for that violation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just a week before the state\u2019s chemical testing, Kiss watched a lab tech place a small metal part in the toaster oven. Kiss, wanting another witness, rushed back to the cubicles to grab Altshuler, who had just returned from medical leave. She took pictures and sent them to Richard Caldwell, the L&I industrial hygiene compliance officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Any employee who worked in the building and may have used the toaster oven could have ingested harmful chemicals after that incident, Caldwell said in a February 2025 report. Up to 50 employees out of more than 200 overall worked in the customer support hub at any given time. Regulators found the company in violation of safety protocols, but because the company removed the toaster oven after the incident, it avoided a fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One lab worker also told Caldwell during the inspection that the Starshield lab went from having two workers to eight at any given time, according to records of the inspection. Two former employees said Caldwell later told them during the inspection that having that many workers in such a small room was not safe, though the issue did not result in any citations. L&I says that it does not have the jurisdiction to cite SpaceX for a maximum occupancy violation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The state agency, though, did not test for all of the chemicals in use in the lab. It didn\u2019t test for the silicone rubber compounds found in adhesives that are linked to reproductive toxicity or for formaldehyde in an epoxy primer that is known to cause cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least four of the untested chemicals found in lab products were labeled as \u201ctoxic to reproduction\u201d \u2014 having the capacity to harm fertility or an unborn child, according to safety data sheets that contain regulatory information on the chemical makeup of industrial products, suggested use and toxicological effects. Most of the chemicals could cause serious eye and skin damage. Five chemicals in the epoxy primer were carcinogenic. The product\u2019s safety sheet suggested it should only be used with proper ventilation and that repeated exposure to high vapor concentrations could cause respiratory irritation and permanent brain and nervous system damage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One employee said their co-worker\u2019s miscarriage happened in the woman\u2019s first trimester. That\u2019s a \u201ccritical window for reproductive toxicity,\u201d according to Joshua Robinson, a reproductive toxicologist at the University of California, San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Customer-Support-Office-2.jpg\")
The Starlink customer support office operates out of a commercial building shared with five other businesses at the Redmond Ridge Business Park. The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries investigated after employees reported medical symptoms they associated with a production lab operating next door. (Aspen Ford\/InvestigateWest)<\/p>\n
One of the products used in the lab contained D4, a type of siloxane. It\u2019s classified in the European Union as a substance of \u201cvery high concern\u201d in damaging fertility, and the Environmental Protection Agency notes that reproductive health is among the areas most sensitive to exposure, Robinson said.<\/p>\n
Robinson said the employee\u2019s miscarriage is \u201cvery concerning\u201d but it would be difficult to link it to the exposure without more biomonitoring data. L&I hadn\u2019t heard of the miscarriage at the time of the inspection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because lab workers weren\u2019t doing any sanding or grinding that would create dust, L&I didn\u2019t test for any other chemicals being used in the lab, said Matt Ross, L&I public affairs manager, adding the activity falls \u201coutside the scope of the inspection.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And D4 was removed from the state\u2019s list of Chemicals of High Concern to Children in 2017. There is no federal exposure limit for this chemical.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of industrial use chemicals do not have occupational exposure levels because they are being created faster than governmental industrial hygienists can test their safety,\u201d Milani said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even though regulators don\u2019t have occupational exposure levels for D4, Milani said SpaceX could have taken precautions to protect workers. The company could have taken the same protective measures that are taken with other regulated chemicals similar in composition, a common practice known as \u201coccupational exposure banding.\u201d The National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety has an open-source banding tool to determine what precautions can be used to keep people safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are plenty of tools that should have been accessible to the folks at SpaceX to do (banding), even if it was a siloxane or something else that doesn\u2019t have an occupational exposure level currently,\u201c he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that they should know about.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Seemed retaliatory to me\u2019<\/p>\n
Altshuler, the employee who was diagnosed with an \u201cunknown chemical exposure,\u201d was terminated in January 2025. SpaceX security paraded him out of the building in front of all his colleagues to \u201cmake a point,\u201d he later said in a retaliation claim. He claimed to be a top performer in the customer support department.<\/p>\n
Caldwell, the industrial hygiene officer, told an L&I officer who investigates retaliation that Altshuler\u2019s sudden termination \u201cseemed retaliatory to me,\u201d according to notes from a meeting between Caldwell and the L&I officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Caldwell knew SpaceX had 24-hour cameras and \u201cheard the employer\u2019s internal discussions,\u201d in which SpaceX management was discussing \u201cwho the complainant was,\u201d the report said \u2014 though in reality Altshuler wasn\u2019t the complainant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A week after Altshuler filed a retaliation complaint in February, he withdrew it and the agency ceased any further investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When L&I released its citations to SpaceX in February 2025, employee health and safety manager Haley Laing emailed all employees in the affected building about the results. But the email misrepresented the findings.<\/p>\n
Laing said all sampling tests performed by the Department of Labor & Industries could not be detected or were below the exposure limit, even though lead was found in concentrations 18 times greater than what\u2019s allowed. Though L&I issued a total of three citations, Laing only mentioned two citations without specifying what they were for. And she assured employees that SpaceX was \u201cconfident\u201d its workplace procedures abided by the law. Laing did not respond to emails or phone calls from InvestigateWest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
SpaceX appealed L&I\u2019s citations, stating they weren\u2019t supported by \u201crelevant facts or applicable law,\u201d according to the company\u2019s appeal. L&I upheld its decision to issue the violations, and SpaceX appealed again to the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, a state agency that hears employer challenges to L&I\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n
Kiss, frustrated with the lack of transparency and accountability, decided to email SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell anonymously.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX has terminated several employees in an apparent effort to silence dissent,” Kiss said. \u201cMorale in the support organization has significantly declined, as dedicated employees are leaving, being wrongfully terminated, feeling mistreated and abandoned.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Retaliation-summary--1-.png\")
In a Feb. 5, 2025 memo, Washington Department of Labor & Industries investigator Deborah Pineda recommended further investigation into former SpaceX employee Douglas Altshuler\u2019s claim that he was fired in retaliation for photographing and reporting a safety violation at the company\u2019s Redmond facility. Richard Caldwell, the industrial hygiene officer who inspected the facility for safety issues, told Pineda that the timing of Altshuler\u2019s termination was concerning.<\/p>\n
Kiss said Shotwell never replied. A few days later, Kiss sent another email to Laing, Shotwell, human resources, SpaceX\u2019s legal team and all employees in the customer support building. This time, she used her name.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon hire, I was never informed (not verbally, nor in writing), that I would possibly be exposed to or working near chemicals in this building,\u201d Kiss said. \u201cSuch actions are illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few days later, Kiss received a phone call on her day off. She was fired.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least one other anonymous customer support employee, whose identity InvestigateWest could not confirm, filed a complaint to L&I, the fourth the state received from SpaceX’s customer support employees within four months. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The employee said customer support workers were worried about \u201cpreemptive measures\u201d taken by SpaceX before the investigation to improve \u201cthe overall health state of the office.\u201d The complaint also alleged that SpaceX management refused to provide workers with copies of the inspection findings and that a worker who shared concerns about a \u201cserious hospitalization due to \u2018toxins\u2019 found in their blood\u201d \u2014 and filed a report about it \u2014 was fired for performance issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe employees who are unaware of the lead contamination are proceeding to work as usual,\u201d they continued. \u201cIf they are not made aware of their months of exposure, it will be more difficult for a blood test to detect accurate levels and diagnose possible future health concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
L&I \u201cdid not find anything\u201d in the complaint that warranted a follow-up, a spokesperson said. It also confirmed that SpaceX management posted its inspection results, but they were located in a different building across the street from the customer support department.<\/p>\n
Former employees have said that several people were fired after raising concerns to management. Kiss and one other employee confirmed their termination with InvestigateWest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Altshuler tried to sue SpaceX. His case, filed in King County Superior Court, moved to arbitration in June. Kiss, and many other employees, were not aware they signed an arbitration agreement as a condition of their employment.<\/p>\n
Arbitration agreements have become increasingly common for big corporations as a private and less costly way to handle legal disputes with employees. It\u2019s a closed door process in which legal claims are decided by a third-party expert instead of a jury. Workers can still receive a settlement from arbitration, but the amount is typically significantly lower than if a jury was involved.<\/p>\n
Martinez, the director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, criticized the use of mandatory arbitration as eliminating workers\u2019 right to a jury and a strategy by employers to avoid public knowledge of the real conditions that workers face.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cArbitration strips workers from the right to publicly challenge unsafe conditions,\u201d Martinez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kiss saw herself building a career at SpaceX. She, like many others, uprooted her life to take the job. She received stock awards and was promoted twice in less than two years. But after her termination, she questioned everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing was done even though there was ample evidence,\u201d Kiss said. \u201cThe managers knew. They could have just said we\u2019re going to temporarily move you to a different space or work from home, but there was just no care whatsoever. You never know what long-term effects this is going to have, too. I\u2019m fine now. Who knows what\u2019s going to happen in the future?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Findings\u2022\u00a0A Starlink lab working with dangerous chemicals next to a customer support hub triggered at least 32…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-393863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AP01--1-.jpg\")
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020, in Washington D.C. (Susan Walsh\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n