Mum on Mold Mystery _ Oak Ridge Elementary's Schoold Board HIding Information

[Moldleg333]

My one question I would like to know is if they conducted Toxin tests.
Many environmentalists concentrate on testing for mold which is good,
but not always accurate in detecting mold issues. Mold can be deeply
hidden and does not release the spores or its shredded particulates
all the time. So, at any given time air tests can produce false
negatives and reliable swab cultures can be difficult to get.Testing
for mycotoxins is a real good way to see exactly what types have led
to illness. It is also important to point out that one of the most
powerful neurotoxins being produced that causes many
neuropsychological and other health issues is "Lysergic Acid
Diethylamide”. In other words "LSD". This is produced by species of
Aspergillus commonly found in homes. This is another reason why so
many mold patients can suffer from rage, exhibit violence, have memory
blackouts, etc. I hope this information can get back to at least the
parents of the many children that are ill at Oak Ridge Elementary.

Story below:
http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-i-2009-12-03-202345.112113_Schools_Mum_on_Mold_Mystery.html


Schools Mum on Mold Mystery


by Paul C. Clark
Staff Writerwrite the authorDecember 03, 2009
Guilford County Schools has reached the most ludicrous, but always
most likely, outcome to the long-running Oak Ridge Elementary School
mystery: no smoking gun as to the cause of the symptoms reported for
years by teachers and students; no one willing to take the legal risk
of even suggesting one, or of declaring the entire incident a case of
mass hysteria; and school administrators, despite having spent in the
neighborhood of $1.5 million on the school, scurrying to send students
back to the school, which has been closed since June.

The four-year-long legal, environmental and medical farce reached its
height of asininity at the school board's meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 1,
when paid-by-the-hour school board attorney Jill Wilson dope-slapped
school board member Paul Daniels and Guilford County Schools Chief
Operations Officer Leo Bobadilla for even talking about talking about
what is actually wrong, or not wrong, with the school. Oak Ridge
students have been split among three other schools since a wave of
headaches, respiratory problems and other symptoms forced its closure.

You heard that right. The school board spent four years and a million
and a half dollars on testing and remediation, called in the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the gold standard in
figuring out what is wrong with public buildings – spent months
running around fixing things NIOSH and a big-dollar New England
consulting firm, Turner Group, wouldn't exactly say were the problem
with the building, and yet no one will talk about what anybody found
out.

Lord knows there is data out there. Guilford County Schools has
released reams (no exaggeration) of testing results. The school has
had a recurring mold problem, a questionable heating, ventilation and
air conditioning (HVAC) system, is reported to have had a host of
problems during construction (whose fault, a current lawsuit will have
to determine), and has generated a passel of reported symptoms ranging
from the scary – spontaneous nosebleeds – to the bizarre – spontaneous
puberty – as if elementary school students didn't have problems
enough. But no one – not Guilford County Schools, not NIOSH and not
the gaggle of highly paid testing services that have examined the
school, will say what that data adds up to. And that doesn't seem to
bother most of the school board members.

Daniels, who tries to ask questions that need to be asked – and that
thousands of viewers watching the televised school board members are
probably screaming at their TV screens to be asked, but that are
somehow considered too gauche for the other school board members to
bring up – still lacks the confidence to just ask them, whatever the
rest of the mildly-divorced-from-reality school board members think.
In this case, he hemmed and hawed, starting off with a masterpiece of
understatement – that there were "a couple of lingering questions"
about Oak Ridge. Truer, or more obvious, words were never spoken.

Daniels asked if there were any concrete results of the
investigations, or any clear medical determinations on the reported
symptoms.

Guilford County Schools Western Region Superintendent Angelo Kidd, who
was fielding questions about Oak Ridge at the time, responded that he
couldn't really figure out what Daniels was asking. That made Kidd
sound a little dim, even given that the question as posed wasn't a
model of clarity. Anyone in the audience could have translated
Daniels' questions for him: What caused hundreds of Oak Ridge students
and teachers to report a wave of symptoms, has that cause been
remedied, and when, and why, is Guilford County Schools moving
students back into Oak Ridge Elementary School?

As Daniels asked more probing questions, Kidd covered himself in less
and less glory, fumbling to reply. "We do know we've had issues in the
building," he said. "The complaints were building for years."

It took $1.5 million, the relocation of 700 elementary students and
the top experts in the country to determine that the school has
issues? Say it ain't so, Angelo!

Daniels continued doggedly, sharpening his questions. If there were
objectively verifiable health conditions, wouldn't someone have said
what caused them? Is anyone willing to say mold is, or isn't, to
blame? Have outside doctors diagnosed any widespread disease among
students that can be environmentally caused?

At that point, Wilson stepped in, telling the school board she
wouldn't advise any of the school system's administrators to analyze
the findings. Daniels looked understandably perplexed by the
statement. The Oak Ridge mystery has played out in banner headlines,
screaming television spots and public meetings, has been the subject
of years of debate and worry among parents, has drawn national
attention – and no one can hint at its solution? And the school board
is supposed to happily tell parents to send their kids back into the
school without saying a word of what its herculean efforts have
uncovered?

Bobadilla kicked in that the determination of the Guilford County
Department of Public Health, made in July – before the school system
spent hundreds of thousands more dollars investigating and supposedly
fixing the school – that the symptoms were caused by poor ventilation,
was the best information on the cause of the symptoms. That echoes
what school officials have said privately, as they clearly think that
at least some of the symptom reports were caused by the HVAC system,
or by media-generated hysteria. But even the health department said
the reported symptoms were statistically significant, and no one has
yet explained why a virtually new school has had leaks, wet floors and
strange sewage smells since even before its reopening.

Even that much of a hint was too much for Wilson, who focused on
Daniels' offhand statement that he knew epidemiology was not
Bobadilla's area of expertise. Wilson said that Daniels was correct in
suggesting they had no expertise – her lawyerly way of blunting the
liability risk of anything Bobadilla might blurt out. But Bobadilla
wasn't blurting.

The net result of what Bobadilla and Kidd wouldn't say was that the
school system is planning to send students back to Oak Ridge
Elementary School in January or February, without hinting what was, or
wasn't, wrong with the school, to protect the school system from any
lawsuits that might arise.

It's hard to see that tactic working. Some Oak Ridge parents are
enraged because they think there's something wrong with the school and
aren't sure it has been fixed. Others, probably more, are enraged
because their children have been crammed into ill-suited, cramped
temporary quarters for months. All the parents are united in wanting
something resembling closure on the issue, and are running out of
patience with the school system. The reams of test data provide
ammunition enough for lawsuits on either side, no matter what
administrators and school board members do or don't say.

School board member Darlene Garrett tried one last time to get an
answer to the smoking-gun question. "Have we found any culprits so
far?" she asked.

Wilson stepped in again, saying the subject wasn't appropriate for
open session. School board Chairman Alan Duncan told her to raise the
question again in closed session, of which the school board had two
that evening. "You ought to get an answer to that question," he said.

Whatever the answer to that question, parents, teachers, students and
taxpayers footing the bill for the Oak Ridge clean-up aren't likely to
hear it, at least until discovery ends in the school system's lawsuit
against Lyon Construction of King, North Carolina, or any future
lawsuits. Lyon denies any wrongdoing in the construction of Oak Ridge,
and says it is being made a scapegoat for the school board's
decisions.

Guilford County Schools is trying to play it both ways – downplaying
any problems with the school, to limit its liability in parent
lawsuits, and claiming major problems in the school's construction, to
win its suit against Lyon Construction. It's an odd balancing act.

The school board also unanimously re-elected Duncan chairman, and
school board member Amos Quick vice chairman, in what has to be the
most yawn-inducing board reorganization every year in Guilford County.
No board members nominated other candidates, and there was no
discussion.

"We look forward to another year," Duncan said. "And it's going to be
an adventurous one, our superintendent warns us."