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A Seattle bus driver says illegal drug use has become so rampant in the city that bus drivers are getting physically ill from fentanyl smoke on buses.
"I really hadn’t ever heard of fentanyl smoking on the bus when I was hired by Metro," Stevon Williams, a bus driver for King County Metro, told KOMO News this week. "I don’t want to be put in a predicament where I’m around drugs every day on my job. I didn’t sign up for that."
Williams told the outlet he is on leave from work while he undergoes medical testing for the negative effects from smoke on the bus.
"You have people who are on there smoking right beside passengers, right beside mothers with little children. It’s for the drug users, they’re looked out for first," Williams added.
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A King County Metro bus travels down 3rd Avenue in Belltown April 2, 2018. (Genna Martin/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
KOMO News reported that there were 1,885 reports of drug use on King County buses last year, and 52 transit operators reported they were exposed to drug smoke. Sixteen of those filed workers compensation claims.
"I just know when we’re sick, we should be checked and listened to," Williams said.
Some King County officials have publicly downplayed the danger of fentanyl smoke, including Dr. Scott Phillips, the medical director of the Washington Poison Center, who wrote in a blog post last year that there is "no real risk."
"When someone smokes fentanyl, most of the drug has been filtered out by the user before there is secondhand smoke. It doesn't just sort of float around ... there's no real risk for the everyday person being exposed to secondhand opioid smoke," Phillips wrote.
Police officers check on a man who said he has been smoking fentanyl in downtown Seattle March 14, 2022. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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The King County Public Health Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
"Metro is improving safety for both employees and customers. Drug use is prohibited on transit, and we are doubling our transit security staff to 140 officers with council support. We’ve added a second security contractor to support our efforts countywide. These staff members are key to addressing reports from operators and customers and reduce incidents on buses and at transit locations," a King County Metro spokesperson told KOMO News.
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King County declared a public health emergency in response to the rapid spread of fentanyl deaths in 2022 when 708 people overdosed on the synthetic drug.
Around the same time, homelessness in Seattle and King County rose roughly 13.8% from 2020 to 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's yearly homelessness assessment.
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