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saphenous and mammary veins. As an obese and sedentary person, he who
was thenminister underwent diets only after the worsening condition of his
health. In short, he was a person in the high-risk range of health problems.
The cause of the death was attributed to pulmonary infection, probably due
to a legionellosis.
With such a clinical profile, the attribution of the entire cause of the
minister’s death to just the lack of maintenance in the air conditioning
should not be considered as a truth.
Duringtheperiodofhospitalizationof theminister, thecommunications
ministry hired a specialized company to perform laboratory analysis
involving the quality of the indoor air conditioned. The results showed
fungi values far above the recommended standards.
They carried out the cleaning operation in the air conditioning systems
of the building, for they were quite dirty. The buildings at the esplanade
of the ministries are dated from the 1960s and there are no registries of
cleaning operations in the ducts since then.
In face of these evidences, we can affirm that the air conditioning system
lacking the proper maintenance activities at the time may have contributed
to the health deterioration of the minister. But the dissemination that the
same air conditioning system killed the minister is an overstatement and
pure sensationalism on the subject.
The fact is that this controversy resulted in a great benefit to the Brazilian
society, which was the issuing of the Directive 3523 of August 28 of 1998,
signed by the office of the Health Ministry soon after 04 (four) months
following the decease of Sergio Motta.
This Directive was a milestone in the Brazilian industry of air
