Mold In Court Office

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1170-2004Sep6.html

Dog Uncovers Sources of Health Woes

Scientists Confirm Mold In Court Office

By Miranda S. Spivack

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 7, 2004; Page B04

For 12 years, employees of the County Circuit Court clerk's

office had complained of headaches, respiratory problems and a

general sense of the blahs. They'd feel fine on the weekends, they

said, but come back to find that the place smelled like a locker room

or rotten potatoes.

So in early August, fed up with years of breathing bad air, they

threatened a sickout.

At one point in the clerk's office, Barney, pictured with owner and

handler Marcelli, rolled over several times. " There was so much

mold, he didn't know which way to go, " Margaret D. Rappaport said.

(Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)

Enter Barney. Not the giant purple dinosaur. The 2-year-old mold-

sniffing dog.

Margaret D. Rappaport, clerk of the Circuit Court, had long suspected

mold as the culprit in their windowless ground-floor office at the

tiny Ellicott City courthouse. Several times over the past 12 years,

she has brought in county officials to try to fix the problem. Mold

remains visible in several locations, including two courtrooms. She

was mulling over the options when a colleague steered her to Barney's

owners, Marcelli and his wife, Rondra, of Westminster.

" We have the bomb dog and the drug dog, so why not the mold dog? It

seemed like it might be an easy answer, " said Sheri German, who met

the Marcellis at the County Fair. A five-year veteran of the

clerk's office, she said she suffers from tearing eyes and an itchy

throat while on the job.

A few days later, Barney, a mixed breed of indistinguishable ancestry

who appears to be part Labrador retriever, was on the case in the

clerk's office. Barney, Marcelli said, has been trained to

detect 18 types of mold as well as a bacteria commonly found in

rotting wood.

It didn't take long. He sat several times while ambling on a leash

through the clerk's office -- a sure sign he was finding mold,

Marcelli said.

" If that was a bomb dog, I'd be getting the hell out of here, " one

sheriff's deputy said as he watched Barney sniff the rugs and

bookcases and hit the deck repeatedly.

At one point, while in the document room, Barney moved low and rolled

over several times on the carpet. " There was so much mold, he didn't

know which way to go, " Rappaport said.

Last week, Barney's detective work appeared to have paid off. In a

three-page report by a laboratory in Portland, Ore., technicians

appear to have found evidence of several kinds of gunk, some of it

potentially toxic, in several parts of the clerk's office. Much of

the mold, it appears, is in the ceiling tiles, probably caused by a

leaking roof that the county is already scheduled to fix.

County will also remove carpeting and put in a tile floor and

take other steps to get rid of the mold, said M. Irvin,

County's director of public works.

" There were some legitimate problems in there, " he said. " We hope

this latest effort will bring closure. " He said the cost of the

cleanup is not known.

Meanwhile, Rappaport is on to her next project: finding a way to

clean out the mold that appears to be clinging to many of the 50,000

pieces of paper shelved in the document room. She is checking into an

ozone generator, a machine that generates molecules that help wipe

out mold.

In the meantime, she feels vindicated.

" That dog is worth his weight in gold, " she said.