School air suspected in girl's ailment

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School air suspected in girl's ailment

By Kathy McCabe, Globe Staff Correspondent, 10/17/2002

A dancer and softball player, Borders was a healthy 10-year-old when

she started sixth grade last month at the Augustine J. Belmonte Saugus

Middle School, her parents said.

Now she is recovering from a lung infection that left her in an induced coma

for eight days at a Boston hospital. Her parents fear her condition was

caused by excessive mold at the middle school, long dogged by complaints

about air quality. had attended the school for just two weeks when

she first suffered breathing problems on Sept. 20.

On Oct. 1, after oxygen levels in her blood dropped as low as 74 percent

(100 percent is considered normal), was admitted to Massachusetts

General Hospital. She spent eight days on a ventilator, and six in a coma

induced by her doctors to make treating her lungs easier on her young body,

her parents said.

Although doctors do not know what caused the infection, 's condition

is similar to a lung ailment she had six years ago when she attended

kindergarten at the Veterans Memorial Elementary School, her parents said. A

mold problem at that school was so bad that the school was torn down and

replaced with a new school last year.

''This is a similar problem to what she had in kindergarten,'' Borders

said, as he played Uno, a card game, with his daughter in her hospital room.

''The only difference then was she didn't have to be ventilated. Other than

that, everything is pretty much the same.''

To protect their daughter's privacy, and Borders declined to

permit publication of a school picture of their daughter. 's condition

became public after Borders attended a recent School Committee meeting

and sent a letter to the Board of Selectmen.

Town officials, who have had the air quality tested at the middle school as

recently as last week, have been helpful, Borders said.

''We're not trying to create a panic. We hope it's something else that's

caused this ['s sickness]. We don't want it to be the school. If it

turns out it isn't, I'll be the first one to stand up in public and say, `It

wasn't the school,''' he said.

But the Borders also say it seems a little more than coincidental that her

lung problems have recurred only when she attends schools suspected of air

quality problems. attended the old Veterans Memorial School for a

year and a half, before it was closed for mold and asbestos problems.

Halfway through first grade, the Borders moved to the Waybright School

district.

For the next five years at Waybright, 's health was stable. She had no

respiratory problems, except in third grade, when almost everyone in her

class caught the same virus, Borders said.

''The doctors thought that [virus] hit her a little harder than the other

kids because she had a weakness in her lung,'' Borders said of her

daughter. ''But after she got better from that, there were no problems. She

had no problems breathing until she started at the middle school.''

Air quality concerns have long plagued Belmonte Saugus Middle School. The

school was built in 1962 on swampland, and the auditorium floods regularly,

as do the playing fields. Teachers, parents, and students have regularly

complained about the air quality. After a furnace backed up at the school

last year, spreading soot, the town spent $250,000 to clean the heating and

ventilation system and test the air. High mold counts were found in a crawl

space, where pipes are stored beneath the first floor, but not in school

classrooms, town and school officials said.

The crawl space was filled with low-phosphate concrete that inhibits mold

growth. ''The mold didn't filter up, but we still filled the space anyway,''

said Saugus School Superintendent Manville.

''We've done followup tests anyway, and they show the remediation has

worked. There is no mold there,'' said Nigro, the town's director of

operations.

The town also hired OccuHealth Inc., a health and safety environmental

consulting company, to test air quality at the school. Last year, the school

tested negative for high mold counts. A test taken on Sept. 26, after

first reported breathing problems, also found air quality acceptable at the

school. ''We've had the place tested, and they can't find anything,'' said

Tony DiGregorio, the school principal.

Borders, however, is skeptical of OccuHealth's findings. The report

states that air is considered clean if the mold spore concentration is less

than outdoor levels or 2,000 counts per cubic meter of air. On Sept. 26, the

total mold count outside Belmonte was 45,437, while the counts ranged from

3,154 to 22,166 in four classrooms and 25,073 in the teacher's lounge.

''Those counts might be less than the outdoors, but they are all well above

2,000. What is a safe mold count?'' he asked.

Deborah ti, the town's director of public health, said lab reports on

mold are often difficult to understand. She noted that there is no uniform

standard to measure safe mold levels. As for the OccuHealth report, the 2000

count threshold applies to individual mold species, not the total count.

''They [OccuHealth] say you could go up to a 5,000 count of a certain mold

and the air would still be considered clean. The outdoor levels have to be

considered in the analysis, because that's where indoor air comes from,''

she said.

ti said the town is working hard to help the Borders family. She expects

the results of the latest state testing in the next two to three weeks. ''We

are very concerned about what caused this child's illness. That's why we've

asked the state for help,'' she said.

Meanwhile, the Borderses must now decide the next step for . Her

future schooling is unclear. Options include home tutoring or moving her to

a school in town. The Borders prefer to keep her with her friends and

teachers at Belmonte, but not until questions about air quality are

resolved. ''We can't take the chance of putting her back in that

environment,'' Borders said. ''She was there for only four weeks and

look what's happened.''

This story ran on page 1 of the Globe North section on 10/17/2002.

© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.