Austrian worker fired from art gallery for Urine Therapy! Discrimination?

An employee at a famed art gallery in Vienna has been fired for "urine therapy".

Urine therapy has ancient roots in many cultures, and is recognized in many forms of Eastern medicine.
Therapies usually encourage the use of one's own urine in many forms, from ear-drops to washing the face, hands or areas afflicted with a rash, right down to starting the day with a warm cuppa of your own finest.

Well, somehow the gallery discovered that the employee was washing his hands and face in urine, for cosmetic purposes (I would assume, although maybe he had a skin condition).

He'd been working at the gallery for 23 years.
I think this would be unfair in many countries.

However Austria has never taken much to multi-culturalism, and also keeps immigration very low.
They don't mind being old-fashioned.
But with normal urine therapy it rapidly absorbs or evaporates as a sterile substance, and shouldn't really bother anyone.

So, is it fair or not to simply fire somebody for the practice?

VIENNA (AP) - A famed Austrian museum has fired an employee for washing his hands and face with his urine.

Alfred Zoppelt says he was fired after 23 years of working as an attendant at the Belvedere, a castle in Vienna with a major art collection. He says his adherence to urine therapy was previously "never a problem."

Zoppelt, 57, said Thursday his notice from Belvedere says he was fired because "you regularly rub urine into your skin, particularly the face and hands. With this, you soil your place of work ... and threaten the health of your co-workers."

www.abc12.com...

Well, I would think that as long as you aren't dousing yourself in your own urine and going to work without a thorough shower afterwards, then...whatever!

If he's coming to work stinking of wee, then that's another story. Man, I never thought I'd be talking about something like this.

I don't see it saying wether or not he does it during work hours, if that is the case, I'd hope he followed it with an anti-bacterial scrub!

reply to post by halfoldman


The problem with body wastes is that they can harbor bacteria. So if they do, then they are not sterile. But who can be sure unless tested? Thus it is taboo in modern cultures.

I am aware of some of the practices, but if the art gallery had a valued employee for 23 years and met up with a problem, they could certainly have handled it differently, such as arranging a meeting with public health instead of firing someone and making him a social pariah subject to public humiliation. The way they handled it shows a knee-jerk reaction rather than a constructive solution, IMO.

Not that I have formed an opinion on this practice, but AFAIK urine is sterile, unlike other bodily by-products.
Unless you have an infection:
allnurses.com...