“Cox-Ganser praised the epidemiological study of the symptoms among Oak Ridge Elementary students and teachers by Dr. Ward Robinson, the medical director of the county health department, saying it was well crafted. She did not, however, agree with Robinson’s statements that mold does not cause health problems, except for those with compromised immune systems and allergies to it.
“NIOSH does believe that mold can cause health problems – and it’s not NIOSH, it’s proven in the literature,” she said. “Yes, there are health effects of mold. Not all health effects of mold are fully understood, and many are still under research.”
UPDATE: NIOSH recommends not reopening Oak Ridge Elementary yet
by Paul C. Clark
Staff Writer
July 23, 2009
The feds have landed in Oak Ridge.
A team from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, inspected and tested Oak Ridge Elementary School July 14 through July 16 in an effort to discover the cause of health problems that have plagued Oak Ridge teachers and students since the school was completely rebuilt in 2005.
The team consisted of at least four NIOSH officials – including Jean Cox-Ganser, an epidemiologist in NIOSH’s Division of Respiratory Disease Studies and an expert on building contamination; Rachel Bailey, a NIOSH medical officer; and two environmental scientists. It also included Stephen Caulfield, a senior vice president of the Turner Group, a New England-based firm that tests and evaluates buildings with suspected environmental contamination; and Fred McKnight, a mechanical engineer and industrial hygienist for the same firm. The Turner Group was recommended to Guilford County Schools by NIOSH.
The NIOSH team has as yet made no determination on what is causing the symptoms at Oak Ridge Elementary, which has had a recurring mold problem since the school was rebuilt, but which the school system and the Guilford County Department of Public Health have said is now mold free. The team examined the school inside and out and set up monitoring equipment that will test the school for contaminants for several weeks. The NIOSH officials said it could take as long as a month to two months for them to issue a final report of their findings.
Parents and teachers hoping for a clear ruling on whether or not Oak Ridge Elementary is safe may be disappointed. At a press conference held at the school on Thursday, July 16, Cox-Ganser and Caulfield said the team rarely does that except in clear cases of exposure to industrial chemicals or other poisons, and won’t do so for Oak Ridge Elementary, where the issue is expected to be low-level exposure to a less powerful contaminant over a long period of time.
“There is no measure by which we can say safe versus unsafe,” Caulfield said. “That’s more a topic for an industrial-type exposure where there’s an imminent hazard. What we’re trying to put together is any known contaminants and pollutants we can find in the building in general, and whether those are known to have an effect on people.”
The team members said there were no obvious signs of mold growth at Oak Ridge Elementary, which they inspected from its basement to its roof. They said their inspection of the school’s heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, in which bacterial growth has been found in the past, was just beginning and had as yet produced no findings.
The NIOSH officials, like other scientists and technicians involved in the Oak Ridge mystery to date, said part of the problem is that there is very little settled science on the causes, effects and cures of low-level building contamination, which is a fairly new phenomenon that has been aggravated in recent years by the trend toward making buildings airtight to conserve energy.
“The associations between exposure and health are not fully understood by science,” Cox-Ganser said. “I don’t think our recommendations will take the form of a statement on safety.”
The team took floor dust samples, which was something recommended by California toxicologist and building contaminant specialist Jack Thrasher in an interview with this paper in June. Cox-Ganser said those samples will be sent to a lab, where they will be tested for different types of mold and bacteria. The Turner Group also pressure tested the building to map its airflow.
The team’s members said they are somewhat hampered in their investigations by the fact that the building is empty, which prevents them from measuring carbon dioxide levels inside it, and because it hasn’t rained lately, which prevents them from spotting leaks or tracing the rainwater flow around the building. Oak Ridge Elementary has had intermittent roof leaks since 2005, and had standing water in hallways before the school opened. Guilford County Schools officials say the roof leaks and other leaks have been fixed, and that they know of no current leaks.
Cox-Ganser praised the epidemiological study of the symptoms among Oak Ridge Elementary students and teachers by Dr. Ward Robinson, the medical director of the county health department, saying it was well crafted. She did not, however, agree with Robinson’s statements that mold does not cause health problems, except for those with compromised immune systems and allergies to it.
“NIOSH does believe that mold can cause health problems – and it’s not NIOSH, it’s proven in the literature,” she said. “Yes, there are health effects of mold. Not all health effects of mold are fully understood, and many are still under research.”
The NIOSH team members said Oak Ridge Elementary is apparently well maintained and cleaned, which isn’t the case for some buildings they inspect. They said they think the health symptoms reported by Oak Ridge are real, based on Robinson’s survey, but less severe than in some other sick-building cases.
“As far as widespread health complaints, I think we’ve seen worse than this in our experience,” Caulfield said. “Not that we’re taking them lightly.”
School board member Darlene Garrett, who was on the project team when Oak Ridge Elementary was rebuilt, grilled the team members on the school’s thermal and control systems and the state of the air handlers, condensate drain and condensate pan in its HVAC system. Garrett has pushed to have the problem corrected since before the school was opened, and has said she suspects the HVAC system may be one of the culprits if there is contamination.
Mold has been found repeatedly since May 2005 in carpets in the school’s classrooms and offices and on books and furniture brought into the new part of the school from the 50-year-old parts of the building. If the unidentified microbial growth in the HVAC system was mold, it’s been found there too.
Caulfield said the HVAC components Garrett cited would be where mold would grow, because they’re where moisture is removed from air and taken out of the system. However, he said, in the absence of water, those components were no more likely to attract mold from the carpet and furnishing contaminations than from the outside air. He said, “We share your concern that there’s a source of moisture, and any spores that settle there have an opportunity to grow.”
Documents generated by the Oak Ridge Elementary project team, which monitored the school’s reconstruction, show the mold and moisture problems at the school predate the school’s opening. They show that heavy rains in May 2005 resulted in several leaks in the brand-new roof of the building and that inside walls were wet and there were puddles of water on hallway floors. Chris Roth, the representative for HICAPS Construction Management Services, which was managing the construction project, reported that scuppers – drains to let water out of exposed parts of buildings – had not been flashed, or lined with metal, to prevent leaks. Roth said the contractor – Lyon Construction of Winston-Salem, or its subcontractor – was trying to identify and fix the leaks, and that the roof was covered by a warranty.
Sources at the school say the contractor was called to the school to fix roof leaks several times over several years after 2005. The roof is no longer under warranty.
By June 27, 2005 – a month after the school got its first students and two months before it officially opened, project team members said mold had been found in six classrooms, several offices and the library, all, except for the library, in the newly constructed parts of the school. Mold has been found as recently as May 2009.
Parents of Oak Ridge Elementary students are left not knowing whether the school will open as scheduled on August 25 – but given the two-month possible wait until the NIOSH team issues its final report, it’s looking increasingly likely that the school won’t open then.
Guilford County Schools has come up with several versions of Plan B, the backup plan to be used if the school isn’t ready then. The most likely Plan B now includes sending many of the Oak Ridge Elementary students to Oak Ridge Military Academy, the historic but financially troubled private school also located in Oak Ridge.
Oak Ridge Elementary is expected to have 750 students enrolled for the 2009-2010 school year, and Oak Ridge Military Academy is estimated to have space for two Oak Ridge Elementary School grade levels – probably grades two and three – or 260 of those students, if the military school opens as usual this fall.
The most likely scenario now has Guilford County Schools putting the Oak Ridge Elementary School pre-kindergarten students at E.P. Pearce Elementary School on Pleasant Ridge Road, kindergarten and first-grade students at Colfax Elementary School, and fourth- and fifth-grade students in trailers at Northwest Middle School.
Cox-Ganser said the NIOSH team won’t be involved in the decision whether or not to open the school.
“I think the decision of whether the school opens in the fall and when the school opens is a matter for the stakeholders to determine, once we’ve made our assessment,” she said. “In all honesty, we cannot, because it’s not scientifically viable to say this building is safe or that building is not safe. If an individual teacher is affected, and asthma is worsening, occupational safety will always say that person should be removed from that situation. But to say a whole building is unsafe is very different.”
Katy's Exposure 