sburg Elementary School Students Fall Ill

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17096-2000Dec16.html

Students Fall Ill

By Brigid Schulte

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 17, 2000

, all of 8 years old, has been getting worse and worse since

school began in September. His asthma, once manageable, is out of control.

He wheezes and coughs and can't catch his breath. At night, he wakes up in a

panic, sometimes vomiting the phlegm that has pooled in his lungs.

The boy has been back and forth to the doctor's office. His mother has

scoured the house with all-natural cleansers and a Hepa-filtered vacuum

cleaner, desperate to remove whatever might be making him sick. Just days

ago, 's doctor threw up her hands and prescribed yet another

medication, his eighth, because the combination of steroids, antibiotics,

anti-inflammatories and antihistamines didn't seem to be working.

His mother, , called his second-grade teacher at sburg Elementary

School, in the upper rural reaches of Montgomery County, to ask whether the

medications, which were making him hyper, were affecting his schoolwork.

" We just don't know what's causing this, " recalls saying.

" Haven't you heard about the mold? " his teacher responded.

Mold--that slimy, dark fungus with a funky odor that seeps into basements

with dank water and stagnant air--exactly what allergists had determined

triggers 's asthma attacks.

" We were furious. If I'd have known about it, the first thing I would have

done is take him out of the classroom, " said 's father, .

" Exposing him to mold is like putting him into a burning fire. "

is not the only one affected. Teachers have been out sick. Other

children have broken out in rashes and complained of stomachaches,

headaches, itchy eyes, sore throats, coughs and constant runny noses.

Bonnie Emmet's son, , a first-grader with a breathing disorder called

reactive airway disease, can't stop coughing.

Donna Wilkinson's third-grader, , has been sick for more than a

month, and two antibiotics haven't made a dent. He'd be a live wire over the

weekend but come home from school Monday evening with a headache and puffy

eyes, feeling lethargic.

" The doctor thought it might be allergies, so we've been keeping a detailed

journal of what he's been eating, cleaning out the house and going through

all this hassle trying to figure out what's wrong with this kid, " Wilkinson

said. " I was just really annoyed with the fact that no one bothered to say

anything about the mold. "

The Wilkinsons and other parents are among a growing number of families who

are angry that they didn't know there was a mold problem until a blurb ran

in the school newsletter a week ago, three months after the smelly fungus

was first noticed. The parents are demanding immediate action--they want

their children moved into portable classrooms--and they worry that such

long-term exposure to mold might harm their children in ways they cannot

imagine.

" The most disheartening thing is that we don't even know what kind of mold

we're dealing with, " Emmet said. " Is it harmful? Or is it the kind that

comes in the fridge when you leave something in there too long? "

It's not as if the school has been ignoring the problem. Workers have been

ripping up carpets, pulling out cabinets and replacing ceiling tiles,

ventilation units, insulation and contaminated pipes since school began and

teachers complained of the often overpowering mildewy stench.

But the mold is elusive. Workers haven't figured out where it is.

On Friday, after outraged parents began comparing notes on their children's

illnesses, the school system moved children from two classrooms and hired a

contractor to test the air quality. 's classroom was considered the

ground zero of stink.

Complicating the picture is mold's reputation as a harmless fungus.

" I don't think [school officials] thought it was really serious at first. I

mean, a smell is a smell is a smell, " said second-grade teacher Carol Plaut,

who has severe allergies.

" It's not a healthy environment for either the children or the adults

working there, " added the teacher, who has been out sick for the past week.

The mold makes Plaut's chest tighten and her throat swell, and it congests

her sinuses. So her doctor has prescribed steroids to control her symptoms

and advised her not to return to school until the mold is gone.

School officials disagree about the possible risks. They hope to resolve the

problem in the three to four weeks it will take for portable classrooms to

arrive.

" It is our opinion that this is not something that is immediately harmful to

the general public, " said Barry Hemler, an industrial hygienist and one of

three environmental safety coordinators for the school system. " Molds are

innocuous. The air we breathe is a soup of fungi, bacteria, pollen, dust,

viruses and bug parts, not to mention various chemicals from living in an

industrial society. "

But Ruth Etzel, a mold expert and public health professor at

Washington University, said researchers are rethinking mold--especially

since she helped find a link between a toxic mold and a number of infant

deaths in Ohio.

" It's only been in the last five years that medical thinking has really

started to change, that some molds can be much more toxic and certainly can

be dangerous to some children's health, " she said. " But this is not yet

widely known. You still find physicians who don't understand that this has

to be taken very seriously. "

Schools need to understand that, too, said Barnett, of the Health

Schools Network, based in upstate New York. In recent years, she said,

schools across the country have been closed because mold sickened children.

" Mold is an increasing problem and an increasing concern in public schools, "

she said, especially since the number of children diagnosed with asthma has

hit epidemic proportions and tight school budgets mean building maintenance

falls to the bottom of the priority list.

There are more than 1,000 species of mold in this country, and they can be

found anywhere that's damp. As they grow, they release spores, which people

then inhale or ingest, and which might cause allergic reactions. Common

symptoms include coughing, congestion, watery eyes and a runny nose. Some

molds can cause breathing problems and fever.

Certain mold spores produce chemicals called mycotoxins that could be

dangerous for people who are sensitive or who are those exposed to large

amounts. A greenish-black mold called Stachybotrys chartarum is particularly

toxic and has been linked to the bleeding-lung deaths of infants in Ohio.

Stachybotrys, which is rare, is found only in areas that have been

water-damaged over long periods.

While results of the air-quality tests will not be available until tomorrow

at the earliest, Etzel said it's highly likely that sburg Elementary is

contaminated with a soup of toxic and nontoxic molds.

" If the damage is that longstanding, then they almost certainly have toxic

molds, " she said.

sburg Elementary is not an old, crumbling building. It was built in

1952 and completely renovated in 1993. The mold problem began in September,

when heavy rains flooded a classroom in the third- and fourth-grade wing.

The building supervisor cleaned up about an inch of standing water and threw

out carpets. When the stench didn't subside, Principal Kwang-Ja Lee called

environmental safety coordinator Hemler.

He and his workers ripped out cabinets and replaced floor and ceiling tiles.

The problem seemed fixed, then the stink resurfaced in the first- and

second-grade wing, on the other side of the building.

Again, Hemler and his workers ripped out carpets, checked vents and replaced

insulation. They drilled holes in the foundation to look for the mold, to no

avail. The air quality is better some days than others, but the stench

remains.

" Every time there was a problem, we had experts working. We thought

everything was under control, " said Lee, who sent a letter home Friday and

who plans to meet with parents Wednesday night. Since many children and

teachers catch colds at this time of year, " I didn't see it as all that

unusual. Now, I'm just more conscientious, " Lee added.

On Friday, the air had only hints of mildew. But second-grade teacher Amy

Otto, who has been out sick with laryngitis, headaches and a rash, knows the

smell will worsen again.

" Today, it doesn't smell. But the problem is still there, " said Otto, who

has moved her class to the computer lab. " My big concern as this drags on

and on is, why isn't this going away? And if I am affected this much, and

I'm bigger than the kids, what's happening to them? "

© 2000 The Washington Post Company