Florida Petition: Give the Health Department a Sauna Mandate
The Florida petition, building on Thomas Bowman's original August 2024 petition to Governor DeSantis: a health-department mandate to inspect, test, and close moldy gym saunas on complaint.
Addressed to: the Governor of Florida and Attorney General James Uthmeier Origin: Thomas Bowman’s Change.org petition of August 2024, filed from Daytona Beach while he was sick from the sauna this site is named for. (Original addressees: Governor Ron DeSantis; the Attorney General at the time was Ashley Moody.)
The petition
We, the undersigned residents of Florida, petition the Governor and the Attorney General of Florida to close the sauna loophole in Florida law.
Whereas Florida regulates health studios through the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services under a statute concerned with registration, bonds, and contracts — and contains no sanitation standard for gyms, saunas, or steam rooms;
Whereas county health departments have told Florida citizens, on the record, that they have no mandate and no rules for saunas — no power to inspect one, test one, or close one, even on a documented complaint of visible mold;
Whereas a Florida citizen in August 2024 filmed and tested mold — Chaetomium, Aspergillus, and Nigrospora — growing in a chain gym’s sauna that had been built in 2012 with no floor drain and no access to clean beneath its bench, became seriously ill, and was passed from agency to agency until the trail simply ended;
We therefore ask the State of Florida to:
- Create the mandate. Give the Florida Department of Health and county health departments explicit authority to inspect gym saunas and steam rooms.
- Inspect and test on complaint. On a member’s complaint, authorize inspectors to enter, inspect, and swab/test the room.
- Close what fails. Authorize closure of a sauna or steam room that fails inspection until it is remediated and re-tested.
- Publish the results. Make sauna inspection records public, as pool inspection records already are.
Florida inspects the pool in the same building. It can inspect the sauna.
Why Florida, why first
Because it happened here, on the record, with names and dates — the full file is the founding story. And because Florida’s own filings prove the gap better than any argument: FDACS took the complaint (case number beginning 248-0184) and could only write the gym a letter; the health department said the words “no mandate” out loud.
File a complaint in Florida today
You do not have to wait for this petition to win. Florida’s official consumer complaint route to the Attorney General is the consumer complaint form at myfloridalegal.com (Office of Attorney General James Uthmeier) — and the Report It center routes you to FDACS and the Attorney General with the lessons of the 2024 trail built in.
Sign it
Sign the Florida petition
Add your name to the Florida petition for a sauna inspection mandate. Your email is used only to confirm your signature and send petition updates — it is never published and never sold.
Signature recorded.
Thank you — your name is on the Florida petition. Petitions are delivered to the attorney general's office with signer counts by city. The other signature that counts today is a filed complaint — the official route for Florida is linked on this page.
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Signature collection for the reinforced Florida petition is open below; the original August 2024 Change.org petition to Governor DeSantis remains the founding document of this campaign. In the meantime, the most useful signature is a filed complaint — Florida readers can file theirs today through the Report It center, which routes to FDACS and the Attorney General’s consumer protection division with the lessons of the 2024 trail built in.