Toxic mold found in more Pahrump schools

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Toxic mold found in more schools

By HENRY BREAN, Managing Editor February 15, 2002

A sign warns away visitors at the school district office in Pahrump, where

mold was recently discovered. (PVT photo by Henry Brean)

As the full-scale cleanup operation ramps up at Pahrump Valley High School,

the Nye County School District continues to find and deal with much smaller

concentrations of toxic mold.

As of last week, at least some mold had been found in water-damaged areas at

four Nye County schools and the district office in Pahrump. The presence of

the potentially hazardous mold Stachybotrys chartarum has only been

confirmed at PVHS and inside a janitorial storage room at J.G.

Elementary.

The discovery of small areas of visual mold has prompted precautionary room

closures at J.G. , Hafen Elementary School and the southern district

office. Test results are pending on a suspected mold area where a pipe broke

at Round Mountain Elementary/Middle School. No mold was found during an

investigation of a water-damaged area at the Beatty Elementary School gym,

according to a report delivered by district Maintenance and Operations

Supervisor Don Brod during Monday's school board meeting in Pahrump.

Once mold was found in an area where water leaked into a ceiling light

fixture in the custodial storage area at J.G. , the entire school was

subjected to complete visual inspection and air sampling, Brod said. That

led to the brief closure of the counselor's office at the school, after

slightly elevated levels of airborne mold were found in the area around a

water-stained ceiling tile.

A patch of mold " about the size of a half-dollar " was discovered there, Brod

said. It has since been removed and the entire room decontaminated.

At Hafen Elementary, mold was spotted in " a few areas of the locker room and

the coach's room, " which has since been locked down, Brod said.

An office and storage area at the back of the southern district office has

also been locked down after extensive patches of mold were found on plywood

and roof sheeting behind the drywall. Preliminary estimates peg the cost of

removing the mold and repairing the damage at about $20,000.

Before the district took it over, the building used to be a small grocery

store. The mold was found in an area that was not " built up " to protect it

from water, Brod said.

Visual inspections have been conducted and some samples taken at Mt.

ton Elementary and Manse Elementary, but no significant problems have

been found. Eventually all district buildings will be visual inspected and

sampling will be done as needed.

" We are continuing to fight this problem, " Brod told the board.

To that end, Brod recently completed a daylong class on mold in buildings.

One of the things he learned was that there is still much to be learned

about this relatively new public health concern. " There is no real standard

for this yet, " he said. The only place with any sort of mold standard is New

York City.

As part of the class, Brod was educated in what causes mold to develop and

that can be prevented. He also learned how to spot potential mold

concentrations and what should be done to eliminate them. He plans to

distill the class he completed into a shorter session that he can give to

the district's custodians and maintenance workers, who are the first line of

defense against mold.

" This is not new, and this is not just occurring in Pahrump, " Brod said.

" This is quite an issue all over, believe me. "

After the search for existing mold is over, the district's focus will switch

to prevention. Mostly that involves securing school buildings against water

leaks, which provide a breeding ground for mold.

In a report dated Feb. 4, Brod estimated that roughly $235,000 worth of roof

repairs is needed at five district schools. The most extensive work will be

at Hafen Elementary, where it will take about $105,000 to reroof large

portions of both the north and south buildings. The gym at J.G.

needs $60,000 worth of work, while $45,000 will be needed for the gym roof

at Beatty Elementary, $20,000 for the roof on the main building at Manse

Elementary and $5,000 for the library roof at Mt. ton Elementary.

Brod recommends inspections of all other roofs in the district.

Some or all of the roof repairs will be paid for with part of a $1 million

grant the district recently received from the county commission. That money

will come from the payments equal to taxes fund, which the county receives

as compensation for the U.S. Department of Energy's ongoing work at Yucca

Mountain.

©Pahrump Valley Times 2002