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Update: Students Clean Up School's Mold Problem

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It's a follow-up to a story you saw only here on Volunteer TV : kids being

used to clean up their high school's mold problem.

Joining us with an update on the situation is Volunteer TV's Lee Merrit.

The broadcast of our story has apparently led to major changes.

School leaders aren't blaming any one: calling it a well-intentioned project

they just didn't consider the health risks of. Risks they hope are now no

longer an issue.

The class project is over: students are no longer working on removing mold

from more than 200 air conditioners inside Jefferson County High School.

" They may have been exposing themselves, unintentionally, to hazardous

materials, working on this, we've stopped that, " says Doug Moody, Jefferson Co.

Director of Schools.

Eight seniors were doing the work, as part of an air conditioning maintenance

class.

" This was scraped from an area that was 2 square feet, " Teacher Seal,

said during our original story, " ...a percentage of it is mold, some of it's

rust, some of it's other particulate things. "

Seal teaches the class, it's an elective many of his students choose to

take because they're interested in going into the air conditioning and

heating business.

" It's about as safe as anything else you can do, " one of the students told us

when we first investigated, " ...perfectly comfortable with it. "

" I knew what I was getting myself into, Mr. Seal told us what we'd be doing,

got insurance in case something happened, but I chose to do it, " said another

student.

Students were told to take home these documents and show them to their

parents: it's a course outline, saying safety precautions taken while working

on

air conditioners, but there's no mention of potentially coming in contact with

mold.

" These mold spores can cause chronic health defects, brain damage, lung

damage, immune damage, " Dr. Lipsey is the only mold toxicologist with a

phd

in the entire country to testify in mold cases.

We tracked him down in ville, Florida after learning about the class

project at Jefferson County High School.

" If the students are wearing dust masks and coveralls, this gives them no

protection, " Dr. Lipsey explains.

Lipsey says mold-cleanup projects should look more like this: workers

wearing full-body respirators, with the area they're working securely enclosed.

He's not the only one, having nothing to do with the Jefferson County School

District, worried about the student workers.

" I was a special education teacher for most of 26 years at San Diego City

Schools, and I don't do that any more because I was exposed to mold in two of

the

schools I recently worked in, and it gave me disabling conditions, " says

Brinchman, former teacher in San Diego.

As a result, Brinchman searches the internet every day for school mold

stories.

She even started her own website, hoping to educate others about the growing

problem, but when she went to our website, and watched high school students in

our area cleaning up mold, she didn't know what to do.

" I just broke down in tears, put my head down and sobbed, " Brinchman

admits, " ...all I could think of was that these students would potentially have

their

futures stolen from them... They might be trapped at home like I am, unable to

go into most buildings, and having chronic illnesses, and it just broke my

heart. "