Great Article About School Librarian, Page

June 26, 2007

_http://www.nysut.org/cps/rde/xchg/nysut/hs.xsl/newyorkteacher_7902.htm_

(http://www.nysut.org/cps/rde/xchg/nysut/hs.xsl/newyorkteacher_7902.htm)

Poisoned by school mold, librarian fights for her career

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity renders Page a virtual recluse

New York Teacher - June 4, 2007

One day at the Liberty Middle School library where Page had worked

since it opened in 1991, the librarian went to retrieve a book from the shelf.

She felt how slimy it was as it slipped through her hands, and then she

herself slipped to the floor.

Page blacked out. When she came to, she crawled out of the library and into

the hall, where she lay at the bottom of the steps until a teacher found her.

Lying there, Page realized why she was always getting sick in the library.

The book was covered with mold from water leaking through the ceiling and

seeping between and into the particle-board shelving.

The exposure to mold had knocked her out. Most libraries are known for bright

posters, student art projects and the latest books; this one has been decked

out with buckets and tarps since it opened.

Page became so ill with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity she has barely been

able to leave her house - much less return to work in the Sullivan County school

where she had been employed. In November 2004, the state Workers'

Compensation Board ruled she had a work-related injury and hypersensitivity

reaction

due to " occupational presence of fungi. "

The diagnosis was later expanded to MCS. The district appealed. In March, she

won a case before a three-member panel of the appellate board for Workers'

Compensation, which agreed with three doctors specializing in mold exposure

that Page has MCS, caused by the library conditions. They cited " credible,

medical evidence to support the finding of causally related MCS. "

She received last year's pay. This came after living on no income during the

long resolution of the workers' comp case. Page was paying $1,100 a month for

health insurance for herself and her children.

Page's quest is more far-reaching than a compensation case - she wants her

career back (see article at left).

The district tried to force her to retire by filing retirement papers without

telling her, according to Page and Liberty Faculty Association President Tim

Hamblin. Page retracted the filing and refused to retire, choosing to make a

stand for working with a disability.

The school district then raised the stakes, seeking to revoke her tenure and

dismiss her for failing to come to work in the very place where she became

ill.

Like a teacher, a librarian can lose tenure - and her job - under Section

3020-a of State Education Law if the district can prove incompetence or

misconduct.

Hearings on her case continue in July.

" I'm fighting to be accommodated, just like anyone with a disability, " Page

said.

Solidarity

Colleagues support Page, including Liberty TA President Tim Hamblin,

center, in white shirt.

" Students, teachers and staff are jeopardized when chronic safety problems

are ignored, " said NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi. " Nobody's place of work

should make them sick. "

Members of her union, the Liberty FA, have defended Page throughout the

proceedings. They have demonstrated at school board meetings with signs

declaring

" Accommodate, Don't Terminate. "

Local President Hamblin said Page's case is precedent-setting.

" There have been some other medical issues with some staff members, " he said.

Two teachers with health issues were moved to the elementary school, Hamblin

said. They had been working in science labs, located above the library.

Hamblin, who worked in the middle school until last year, said the library

and other places had extensive leaks.

" Different parts of the hall would leak in the corridor connecting middle

school and high school, " he said. " They always had buckets in that corridor. "

The school was built in a wet area.

In monthly meetings with administrators, representatives of the 170-member

faculty association pressed concerns about the leaks.

To date, the carpet has been taken up and damaged ceiling tiles have been

replaced, Hamblin said. Damaged books have been removed and work continues on

the roof. Voters approved a referendum authorizing more work this summer.

" We thought they would totally gut it, " Hamblin said. " They didn't. "

The corrective actions have taken years.

" I remember when we had open house in 1991, there were leaks, " Hamblin said.

Buckets were placed under the leaks. When the leaking worsened, Page would go

in to the school on weekends and empty the buckets.

Students would trip over the " omnipresent " buckets, Page said, and the rug

was always wet. The district had the Sullivan County BOCES safety coordinator

come in, and different molds were found.

The union paid for a mold and radon inspection, which determined the library

was not a safe space, Page said.

When the district had the rug torn up over spring break in 2004, there was no

machine to create a negative air flow and no containment. Mold spores swept

through the air.

Huge shelving units in the library housed moldy books. Page said when the

shelves buckled from leaking water, they were bolted back into place, rather

than being replaced.

She began getting mildly sick in 2002. Then she started fainting. " I'd get

dizzy and start stumbling around, " she said.

Her doctor thought perhaps she needed more exercise, so she joined a gym and

worked out every morning. By January 2004, she was so tired every day she

felt disoriented.

" We had a lot of snow and a lot of melting and leaking, " she said. One day

that month she came to work and the library ceiling was on the floor, she

said.

By February, the library reeked. One morning, within an hour of arriving, she

fainted. Her body stiffened. She went to the doctor, reporting, " It feels

like I've been poisoned. "

She was thought first to have the flu, and then a sinus infection.

Like any astute librarian, Page went by the book. She mailed some of the

library's holdings to the Center for Indoor Research at Texas Technical

University, which she said reported nearly 1 million mold-colony-forming units

per

square inch on some of the books.

" What was alarming beyond the amount was the varieties of molds, showing the

problem has been growing, " she said.

Unable to work at the school any longer, she left in June 2004.

The union and the district sought help from the National Institute for

Occupational Safety and Health for problems at the middle school and some air

quality problems at the elementary school. Hamblin said 20 middle school

teachers

filed paperwork with health complaints.

In December 2005, NIOSH declared health hazards at the Liberty schools,

noting persistent leaks, mold on murals and rotted wood. (See

_www.cdc.gov/niosh/hhe/reports/pdfs/2005-0033-2984.pdf_

(http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hhe/reports/pdfs/2005-0033-2984.pdf) .)

When the local newspaper reported the NIOSH finding, more than 100 concerned

parents and teachers flocked to the school board meeting, but only three

public statements were taken before the meeting was closed, Page said. At that

same meeting, the board voted surreptitiously to submit Page's application for

retirement, she said.

Page has regularly gone to the occupational health clinic at Upstate Medical

University in Syracuse, part of the State University of New York, to help

with diagnosis and learn how to avoid exposure. " They are extremely helpful and

very knowledgeable, " she said.

" Given the issues surrounding this facility, this is one more example of why

it is critical to maintain Upstate Medical University, " said Iannuzzi.

Compromised

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity - MCS - has compromised Page's life. Her

daughter Miranda spent her sophomore year living with friends and her father a

half hour away, because Page was too ill to care for her.

When Miranda comes into the house from school, she's covered with scents the

average person wouldn't notice: lingering perfume and deodorant that friends

might have worn, paper products she's touched, shampoo or laundry soap

clinging to clothes from a friendly hug someone gave her.

She has to go through a plastic barricade, bag her clothes and use special

shower products to remove hidden scents before she can say hello to her mom.

Otherwise, the scents are unbearable for Page. Any airborne propellant like

perfume " goes right to our brain. We (MCS sufferers) have no more blood brain

barrier. It's like suffocating, " said Page.

Page's longtime partner, , and his son moved across the street - the

daily routine was too much stress.

, formerly a network administrator for the Liberty district, was bringing

home fragrances and mold spores from the middle school, which Page could not

tolerate.

He took a job with a different school district a long commute away.

Mold triggered her condition. Eventually, Page said, she was unable to

process any petroleum byproduct, such as laundry detergent, or chemical

fragrances

added to personal products such as lotions, shampoos, air fresheners or

dryer sheets, whose softness comes from a chemical coating.

" When I first got sick I slept all the time and couldn't function. I couldn't

leave the room without burning lungs, " said Page.

Eventually, hungry to go outside, she found an opening in the imprisonment of

her illness.

" After spending about four months isolated in one room for good breathing -

with the metal bed frame and non-toxic mattress only - I began walking to the

nearby graveyard where the wind is always fresh and clean, " Page said.

She would go before dawn, before buses and cars hit the road, walking a loop

around the headstones. She wears a bulky mask.

Graveyard walks

" I would often cry there, and it wouldn't matter if someone sees you crying

in a graveyard, " Page said.

Former teacher friends and former students are buried at this Liberty

graveyard, which Page calls " a connection to life and death and community. "

Page began seeing a therapist, who would meet her at the cemetery.

" We walked or sat in the good air, so I could not react to his personal

products and because I could not tolerate his office, " she said.

- Liza Frenette

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June 27, 2007

It sounds like the school have been unwilling to clean up their workplace

for a long time and have accepted that it will make people sick but don't

want to take responsibility for their actions.

Now they are trying to blame it on her.

They really do need to find a clean workplace for her - she clearly put in

years there and that sweat equity must be worth something financially.

These diseases take time to develop and that needs to be recognized and

punished. Otherwise they will be delaying maintenance and making people

sick, and then when they 'leave', hiring new, still well, people, stringing

them along on low teachers salaries with a promise of retirement benefits

and then in five or ten or fifteen years when they start getting il like

their predecessors, firing them or laying them off with nothing to show for

it benefit-wise.

That sounds like a deliberate act of fraud or bad faith.

June 27, 2007

This happens in schools all over this country. I'm a teacher and the same

thing happened to me. Parents and faculty were never given the reports they were

just told that everything was fine and mold would be cleaned up. They way

they cleaned up they made things worse. A Year later another teacher had to

leave and is far worse than myself. New teachers were hired and school

continues to operate like nothing happened. I pray for the children every night

who

I'm sure will be sick yrs. from now if they aren't already. It truly is a

nightmare that this type of deceit can continue in our workplaces especially our

schools were children depend on the adults to take care of them!!!

S

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