Teachers and students in Nova Scotia say mouldy classrooms are making them ill

[Guest guest]

http://www.thestar.com/

Home sick from school

Teachers and students in Nova Scotia say mouldy classrooms are making them

ill

By Toughill

Atlantic Canada Bureau

HALIFAX

IT'S BEEN FIVE YEARS since Whitman ran his fingers through the coarse

hair of his big black dog.

That simple gesture of affection may be what he misses most from his old

life. It may be the hardest part of living with a mysterious illness that

has turned his home into his prison and changed every waking moment of his

day.

was one of the first to fall in an epidemic of environmental illness

sweeping Nova Scotia, where hundreds of teachers and students have

complained that schools built in the 1960s are making them sick.

Provincial officials say they can't find any cause for the confusing array

of symptoms and hint that the root of the problem may be psychological. But

few outside the bureaucracy are convinced that is true.

Consider:

Two Halifax high schools are closed right now because of widespread

complaints of headaches, nausea and pain. The closings have thrown more than

2,000 students into turmoil, crowding them in temporary arrangements into

different schools.

Teachers at Windsor High School threatened to stop coming to work because of

health problems at that school. (Officials quickly promised to build a new

school.)

Dozens of junior high school students in Barrington Passage broke out in a

rash this spring whenever they went into the school. A dermatologist

discounted the phenomenon, but officials closed one wing of the school

anyway. It still hasn't reopened.

One doctor says he has treated 400 people who developed chronic diseases

because they were exposed to toxic substances in local schools.

Over the last five years, 17 schools in the province have been closed at

least temporarily because of complaints about fumes, mould or other

environmental problems.

All the complaints come out of schools that were slapped together in the

1960s and 1970s by cash-strapped towns forced to bankroll the needs of a

school-age population boom. Then the schools were left to moulder when

maintenance budgets were slashed in the deficit-fighting 1990s.

It was one of those poorly built, badly maintained 1960s-era schools that

Whitman says forever changed the life of her son.

was a robust 12-year-old when he entered Grade 7 at Duncan MacMillan

High School, a sports fanatic who spent hours kicking around a soccer ball

and frolicking in the grass with his beloved dog, Alf.

Duncan MacMillan had a history of environmental problems, but in September,

1997, parents were told everything was fixed, everything was fine.

began having problems almost immediately, leaving class because of

crushing headaches, dizzy spells and tremors that shook his whole body. His

childhood asthma came back, far worse than before.

On Oct. 9, 1997, was playing basketball in the school gym when he got

another crushing headache. Officials later found mould behind the gym wall.

's family doctor suspected Duncan MacMillan was making sick, and

referred him to the Nova Scotia Environmental Health Centre.

The clinic is funded by the Nova Scotia government but is not completely

accepted by the medical establishment here. Few physicians openly criticize

their own colleagues, but some deny that environmental illnesses even exist.

" Despite the fact that there is extensive literature on it, for the average

physician, it is still controversial, " says Dr. Fox, who runs the

clinic.

" Because it isn't something a physician can see, like a broken bone or a

specific bacteria, many tend to dismiss it. "

Physicians still don't understand why some people seem to suddenly become

allergic to most of the modern world, Fox says. They suspect the nervous

system is at the root of the problem and have noticed that people are more

vulnerable to the syndrome during adolescence and menopause. They know that

certain substances, like toxic mould, can trigger the syndrome, but its

etiology is still a mystery.

Dozens of foods and chemicals are dangerous to , especially perfume,

ammonia, pet hair, plastic bags, carrots, milk, ink, pesticides, floor wax,

gasoline, exhaust fumes, mould, yeast, oranges.

He never went back to school and he didn't get better. Finding out what sets

off his attacks has been a painful process of trial and error.

At Christmas dinner in 1997, began to choke and gasp. That's how he

found out he was sensitive to the chemicals used to raise commercial turkey.

Now he eats only organic meat and vegetables.

He used to love to go fishing near the shore by his home. If he puts his

feet in salt water now, his whole body breaks out in hives. On strong days,

he still plays with his dog, but only after donning gloves so he doesn't

touch Alf's hair.

He corresponds with a tutor by computer, reads his textbooks through a clear

bag normally used to cook poultry. Each time he turns a page, he must put on

a face mask, reach quickly into the bag, then wash his hands. A whiff of

newspaper - even the scent of Christmas wrapping paper - can send him to bed

for weeks.

, now 17, rarely leaves his home. When he does, his mother is close by,

sniffing out the terrain just ahead of him for hidden dangers.

A simple interview with a reporter takes days of preparation on both sides.

Anyone coming in contact with must wash their clothes twice, once with

vinegar and a second time with a special soap. They must shampoo their hair

twice with a specific product and not use deodorant, hair products or

aftershave.

In a boardroom at the Environmental Health Centre, where goes when he

must meet a stranger, his mother enters the room first to make sure

everything is all right. Even the presence of a pad of lined paper in the

room is enough to make him sick.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

----

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

----

When the room is cleared by Whitman, comes in carrying oxygen, a

ventilator for asthma medication, a shoulder bag full of the $1-a-drop

medicine sold by Fox, and a face mask.

He is a surprisingly positive teenager, given his almost total isolation

from the world.

" I've tried to make the best of what I have after my life changed, " he says.

" But I do not have a public life. My life is looking through a window. "

His parents are far angrier than he about what has happened to him.

Halifax lawyer Bureau has launched a lawsuit against the Halifax

School Board on their behalf, arguing the board should have known the school

was unsafe.

" First and foremost, I want to see somebody take responsibility for

being sick, " says his mother.

" We were promised our school was safe. If it's safe, I wouldn't have had to

watch my son go through this miserable illness. "

It will be up to the court to decide if it was the school that made

sick. His lawyers point out that didn't have any of these problems

before he attended Duncan MacMillan. They also point out that the school had

documented air quality problems the year before and that a number of other

students and teachers at the school have developed similar, though less

extreme, forms of environmental illness.

The school board is expected to argue that airborne mould levels never

exceeded safety guidelines at the school and that the link between mould and

environmental illness is still a matter of medical debate.

The thing that hurts most, says his father, is that some people simply don't

believe their once vibrant son has a real disease.

" They seem to think that if they don't understand it, it must not exist, "

Whitman says. " That's like saying if I don't speak French, what you

are saying in French doesn't make sense. "

's main contact with the world is through his younger sister, ,

who spends hours telling him every detail of her everyday adventures.

" Life came to a halt for him, " says his mother. " There are no school dances

for . He missed the excitement of going out on a first date. The closest

he will get is listening to his sister. "

's biggest treat this year was going out to buy a Christmas present for

his father. The arrangements were made far in advance. The store owner told

when to bring in her son, then cleared the store of customers and

clerks while quickly browsed through the shelves of auto-racing

paraphernalia.

Fox says Whitman is just an extreme case of a malady he sees every day.

Since he opened the clinic six years ago he has treated about 2,000 people,

of whom at least 20 per cent got sick because of toxins in schools.

Moser is one of them. She taught at Duncan MacMillan for 20 years. As

she grew older, she gradually became more and more sensitive to common

chemicals like exhaust and perfume. She believes mould in the school caused

her illness.

Today, she is on permanent disability, unable to work because of her

chemical sensitivities.

" I have to be very careful how long I am out in public, " she says.

" I pay for it with a migraine. "

A spokesperson for the Halifax school board refused to discuss 's case

with The Star, citing the lawsuit, but he did say there are too many health

problems in local schools.

" This speaks to years of deferred maintenance, " Doug Hadley said of the four

Halifax schools that have been shut down by environmental problems in the

last three years.

" We have many buildings that are at the end of their useful life. "

The province agrees that maintenance is a huge problem in Nova Scotia

schools and that many of them are ready to be scrapped. But officials aren't

convinced the old schools are making people sick.

Gerald Muise is in charge of environmental health concerns for the

provincial Department of Education. He says Nova Scotia has ordered scores

of mould tests in many different schools but has found only one place where

the level of mould in the air could be considered a legitimate health risk.

" What is happening? We don't know, " says Muise. " They always seem to point

to our schools that are making them sick. You don't see these complaints in

private business. Maybe it is just a sickness of government employees. "

It is skeptics like Muise who most irk the Whitmans.

The family lives on less than $2,000 a month. They don't have the money for

's organic diet or the expensive medications sold by Fox. They worry

what will happen to their son when they are gone, how he will make a living

and what he might have been able to do if his body hadn't revolted against

the modern world.

That's why they are suing.

" We don't want to see spend the rest of his life living on $542 a month

because of something the government is responsible for, " says his mother.

" He could have done anything he wanted to. He was robbed of that

opportunity. He should have the same financial security as if this hadn't

happened. Mom and Dad aren't always going to be here for him. "