A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of inspection reports for 19 restaurants at the Pittsburgh International Airport found that together they racked up some 270 critical violations over the past two years. Critical violations are the most serious types of problems that put people at risk for foodborne illnesses. The restaurants also accumulated roughly 230 lesser infractions.

Patricia Sabatini of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes the reports by the Allegheny County Health Department also showed seven “administrative” actions, a fairly rare occurrence in which persistent problems trigger a visit from a health department supervisor to press the need for corrective action.

“It sounds like more violations than we want to have,” interim health department director Ronald Voorhees said when asked about the newspaper’s findings.

The Airport Group, a policy group affiliated with the labor union Unite Here, last month expressed concerns about food safety conditions at the airport during a board meeting for the Allegheny County Airport Authority. (Unite Here does not represent workers at food concessions at the Pittsburgh airport.)

The group presented board members with an analysis identifying 271 violations at airport restaurants since the beginning of 2012, a shorter period of time than the newspaper’s review, including 132 critical violations.

By comparison, inspection reports for the similarly sized Mineta San Jose International Airport showed 146 violations at a nearly identical number of facilities over roughly the same time frame, with just two violations termed “major” by inspectors there, Airport Group analyst Ian Mikusko said.

“We wanted to alert the Allegheny County Airport Authority about the number of violations so it could take positive action to ensure the safety of food available to the airport’s passengers,” Mr. Mikusko said.

When asked about the newspaper’s findings and the concerns of the Airport Group, the airport authority issued an email statement saying it was “proud of the track record of Airmall’s food and beverage operators and of the hardworking food service workers who make the program a success.”

Airmall USA, which manages the retail space at the airport, also released a statement via email saying it “takes great pride in managing and maintaining a clean, safe food and beverage operation.”

Both the airport authority and Airmall emphasized that “no airport eatery has any outstanding issues” with the health department.

Inspection reports for Allegheny County restaurants are available online at http://webapps.achd.net/Restaurant. After locating a particular restaurant, click on the restaurant’s name to see inspection reports going back two years.