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7 Custodians Sickened While Cleaning Mold
Click 2 Houston.com - Houston,TX,USA
HOUSTON -- Seven custodians were hospitalized after they were sickened while cleaning mold out of a northeast Houston school, KPRC Local 2 reported Saturday ...
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7 Custodians Sickened While Cleaning School
http://www.click2houston.com/news/14031333/detail.html
POSTED: 9:09 am CDT September 2, 2007
UPDATED: 1:05 pm CDT September 2, 2007
HOUSTON -- Seven custodians were treated and released at a local hospital after they were sickened while cleaning a northeast Houston school, officials told KPRC Local 2 Saturday.
Mold was found in an annex building at Key Middle School on Thursday after two workers fell ill and were hospitalized.
Cleanup crews went to the school on Friday. Seven of 15 custodians were sickened, but they were not the only ones.
"Even the principal herself broke out," custodian Fred Holloway said.
The principal and assistant principal left the school and appeared to be coughing and having trouble breathing. One of them reached for her inhaler.
The president of the union that represents school custodians said the building is not safe.
"You can actually smell the mold and smell some of the areas that they went in there and tried to clean up the area with Clorox," Houston Educational Support Personnel Union President Wretha Thomas said.
Houston Independent School District spokesman Terry Abbott said fumes from the bleach made the custodians sick. They have all been treated and released from the hospital and cleared to return to work, Abbott said.
Abbott said the school district aggressively finds and cleans mold. He said the building would be cleaned and ready for students on Tuesday.
Thomas said she is not sure how safe the students will be.
"No kids are in that classroom, but they have kids in the classroom next to those sick rooms," she said.
Abbott said studies have not shown unusual amounts of mold in the building.
Three air conditioning units were stolen from the school during the summer. Abbott said those thefts hampered the district's ability to keep the building cool during the summer break.
Custodians said more should be done.
"People are getting sick and this is a serious matter," Holloway said. "This is nothing to play with because you're playing with people's lives."
Union representatives said they plan to rally in front of the school on Tuesday morning.
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AP Texas News
Sept. 3, 2007, 8:00PM
Houston school district, union at odds over janitors' sickness
© 2007 The Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5104703.html
HOUSTON — A city councilman has joined the call for more air quality tests at an elementary school where seven janitors got sick this weekend.
Houston Independent School District officials said the school is safe and will be open to students on Tuesday, despite union concerns about mold problems in the building.
District spokesman Terry Abbott said the janitors became sick Saturday after inhaling bleach fumes during routine cleaning at Key Middle School in northeast Houston. The janitors were treated at a nearby hospital and released, he said.
"We've had a number of inspections done by internal experts and independent external experts," Abbott said. "None of them have found any unusual levels of mold or any problems at the school."
Robert D. Gilmore, a senior project manager with ICU Environmental, Health & Safety, said in a report to the school district that inspections done over the weekend pointed to the workers being exposed to irritating cleaning fumes.
Meanwhile Houston City Councilman Jarvis Johnson is asking the city's Health and Human Services Department to check the building.
"I'm calling for the health inspectors to come in today, not tomorrow, but today," he said Monday. "You can't just take some bleach and water and knock the mold off the walls. That doesn't mean you've remediated the problem."
Johnson represents the area on the council but doesn't have authority over school issues.
"I certainly have a lot of concern. Anytime you put my children in jeopardy, anytime you put the teachers in jeopardy. Anytime you put janitors in jeopardy," he said in a story in Monday's online edition of the Houston Chronicle. "These are all residents of the city of Houston. Certainly they deserve me being involved."
Starla Reichek, vice president for nurses with the Texas Federation of Teachers, said a strong bad smell in the school is a sign that something is wrong.
Reichek, who is also in her first year as nurse at Key Middle School, said she noticed the smell on her first day in the building.
"They need to clean it up," she told the newspaper. "Whatever it takes. The building needs to smell right. You shouldn't see visible mold and mildew on the wall."
Abbott said the district reacts quickly to clean up mold when it's reported. In the case of Key, a small amount of mold was found in one annex building, but the sickened janitors were working elsewhere at the time, he said.
"They weren't in the annex," he said. "They were all up on the second floor of the main building."
Gilmore's report recommended another inspection for a room in the annex to determine the source of a "slightly 'musty' odor" as well as additional cleaning there. The report also recommended additional inspection of the main building where the janitors became ill.
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said mold is "all over" the school and she became sick Wednesday after visiting.
"By the time I got out of the building, I had a headache, my eyes were watering and I was congested," she said. "I wasn't when I walked in there."
Wretha Thomas, president of the Houston Educational Support Personnel Union, said the district relied on untrained janitors to take care of a problem that should have been handled by specialists.
She said the union, which represents district custodians, will gather in front of the school Monday to protest the district's decision to keep the campus open.
"We're going to ask (them) not to send the kids back until they get a professional team to go in there and comb that school from one end to the other," Thomas said.
With regard to the above article, I'm told (by a CSEA Occupational Health Specialist) that it is illegal for the custodial staff to clean mold in school buildings unless they are specifically trained to do so.
It happened in our school and it was proof that they had not a clue as to what they were doing. The mold was the worst in our school's basement. They opted to take a power washer that contained a bleach solution to clean up the months-old mold. The first hit with the power washer did nothing but scatter the mold spores into the air. The Chief Custodian, at that point, told his staff to stop.
Mold in schools seems to be getting worse ~ and it seems as if those trained to treated illness due to mold exposure are few and far between. I'm been battling illnesses for two years now and it's been a living hell. My only consolation (somewhat!) is that I won my Workers Compensation hearing in July and the school is now responsible to pay by past AND future medical bills relating to my illness.
~ Joan Dinizio
Greenport,NY
The custodian in my building had red bloody eyes like I did. We both were suffering from our sick school. Maybe his inflammation was from the two feet of standing water in the basement in our building, or from taking the rodents from the traps in the building, or from the seven inches or more of contaminated soil that was mysteriously hauled away for undisclosed contaminates, or maybe from picking up my ceiling tiles that were raining down on the students each day, or perhaps it could come from cleaning up rooms where rain poured down through the lights and fell into buckets each year. Then again maybe it was from the xerox copy room where the A/C was malfunctioning with too much condensation leading to mold problems. Perhaps it was from cleaning out the filters from my air purifier in my room. Who asked him to do that? NOT ME. Maybe it was from the harsh chemicals he had to use to clean our rooms and wax our floors. After the remodel we had plenty of new formaldehyde ladened particle board shelving to contend with. Whatever it was in the sick building of environmental contaminants, our bloody eyes told the story of systemic illness in our bodies. God help the children, the teachers, the unknowing staff, and the custodians who will have their lives shortened due to going into sick schools each day!
Long Beach, CA Teacher
Even though I know it is illegal for custodians to be required to clean up mold, I know for a fact that they are being asked do so. In particular, after an inspection and recommendation for mold to be removed (in a Long Island Elementary School) using a tyvex suit and N-95 respirator, the custodians were told to go down and remove the mold with no protective gear and were not even told about the recommendations of the inspector. Knowledge is power and all CSEA Unions should be diligent in educating their members about the dangers of mold. The problem is that many of the custodians are not told about the dangers and/or just follow orders without questions as to their personal safety. You cannot rely on administrators to educate them as many administrators are trying to hide or get rid of the problem before it becomes an issue in their school and MONEY needs to be spent on remediation. Many custodians are afraid to not follow orders for fear of losing their jobs. Shameful!
Long Island, NY Teacher
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO MY CO-WORKERS AND I WERE PAINTING STAIRCASES IN OUR SCHOOL BUT WHAT GOT ME DISGUSTED WAS THAT THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR HAD US PAINT THE MOLDY CEILING TILES INSTEAD OF REPLACING THEM. THE TILES ARE VERY HIGH UP, BUT MOLD CAN STILL COME DOWN IN BETWEEN THE MOLDING THAT HOLDS THE TILES AND THE SCHOOL DOES NOT HAVE A LADDER THAT HIGH TO GET THEM. THEY COULD HAVE RENTED SOMETHING. I AM SICK OF THESE ADMINISTRATORS SITTING IN THEIR NICE, CLEAN, NEWLY RUGGED AND FRESHLY PAINTED AND AIR CONDITIONED OFFICES, WHEN TEACHERS, STAFF, AND OF COURSE, THE CHILDREN ARE AFFECTED BY THIS CRAP WE BREATH.
School Custodian
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