Poisons in Our World: Moldy Schools (Part 1 of 3)

(Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- The statistics are staggering. Twenty million people in the United States have asthma -- 6.3 million of them are children. Asthma causes 14 million missed days of school each year. Secondhand smoke, pets, dust mites, and even cockroaches are known triggers. Another one is mold, a problem affecting many of our nation’s schools, old and new. In fact, breathing is becoming many of our children’s hardest subject to master.

It was on the ceilings. The walls. The textbooks -- everywhere it shouldn’t have been, including the cafeteria where they were serving children lunches. The contamination was mold. It was the new uninvited guest at East High School in Memphis.

“I had to blow my nose all the time, and I couldn’t really run like I used to,” says Sydney, a student at the school. Her mom Elise says, “She would come home tired all the time. She would have headaches. She would get winded going up the stairs.”

Those were the first signs something was wrong for Sydney and Elise. Other students were also complaining of breathing problems. Then, a boy died. “That’s when people really started to figure out, like something’s really wrong,” Sydney says.

Doctors could not link the death directly to the mold, but they could not rule it out.

“A child who was allergic to mold and who was encountering it at school would become gradually more and more ill,” says Raymond Slavin, M.D., an allergist/immunologist at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

Melody fell ill within a month of starting at East High. Her mom Laynette blames the mold. “The doctor stated she was not to go back into East High School. Every time she went back, she got sicker and sicker and sicker.”

Once healthy young girls, Melody and Sydney now take a handful of drugs every day to control their asthma. Doctors say until the cause of the mold is fixed, the problem will never go away. “Mold is everywhere, but it will only grow with water damage,” Dr. Slavin says.

Building forensic expert David Odom, of CH2M Hill in Orlando, Fla., says strict airflow regulations make schools -- both old and new -- the perfect target for mold. “The more air you push into a building, the more you bring into a building, the more difficult it is to continuously condition that air.”

The humidity in air leaves moisture -- an automatic trigger for mold. Nearly 20 percent of schools report unsatisfactory air quality, and it’s not being fixed.

“The benchmark models that school districts are using are other school districts," Odom says. "The benchmark models they ought to be using is, who are the best in the industry out there at designing and constructing facilities that don’t have problems, and it’s not other school districts.”

Parents and students should look for a musty smell, water intrusion or mold growth itself. Mold can cause worsening asthma, flu-like symptoms, fatigue, headaches, inability to concentrate, lung infections, rashes and shortness of breath.

Elise says, “I watched her go from a very healthy child to a sickly child. It’s just really revved up her immune system, so she’s allergic to just about everything.” Remembering the child who died is a sobering thought for Laynette. “He had the same symptoms as my daughter. It could have been her right along behind him.”

Both Melody and Sydney have changed schools and are moving on, but with an illness their moms think they never should have had.

The EPA has a kit schools can use to detect, prevent and fix mold problems. It’s called Tools for Schools and is offered free of charge on the EPA Web site. By the way, East High School has brought in experts and taken many steps to correct their mold problem.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

If you would like more information, please contact:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov (search: MOLD)
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/tools4s2.html (Tools for Schools)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/airpollution/mold/stachy.htm 
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/airpollution/mold/