Schools throughout New England battle mold

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — It’s popped up in carpeting, crawled over ceiling tiles, and slimed books and bulletin boards in schools from Maine to Rhode Island.

“Mold growth has been at a rate that we have never seen in history,” said Suzanne Condon, assistant commissioner for environmental health for the Massachusetts health department.

The unprecedented outbreak delayed the opening of school for thousands of youngsters across New England this September and forced school officials to spend thousands of dollars scrubbing their classrooms.

A spritz of household bleach or a good scrub with detergent will clean mold from hard surfaces, but it’s not so easy with other materials.

Elementary school students in Bradford, N.H., finally began classes last week at the Mount Sunapee ski lodge while workers ripped moldy carpeting out of 11 classrooms.

“We are getting hundreds and hundreds of phone calls from schools all over the region,” said Eugene Benoit, regional coordinator of indoor environment programs for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “I haven’t seen as many school closing or delays in openings in the ten years I’ve been working with this.”

Schools aren’t the only buildings affected. Municipal offices, courthouses, libraries, and homes have also been infested with the tiny spores.

“I’ve even got mold in my basement for the first time that I can remember,” said Benoit.

The scientists blamed a soggy and steamy July and August for creating conditions ideal for fungi across the Northeast.

“Basically, there are three factors, and all have to do with the weather,” said Condon. “Extraordinarily high temperatures coupled with extremely high humidity and unbelievably heavy rain with no breaks. Everything got wet and had no opportunity to dry out.”

Under those conditions, all it took was a leaky roof, a loose window, condensation from an air conditioning system, or a section of the shampooed rug that was left damp to allow the fungus, which is always among us, to multiply into big problems.

The calls for help started as soon as the districts began reopening and cleaning the buildings in August in preparation for a new school year, she said. More than 50 schools in Massachusetts alone reported mold problems.

And the cleanup hasn’t been cheap for cash-strapped districts.

In West Bath, Maine, the school spent about $55,000 to correct its mold problem. Superintendent Ron Gleason said nearly every carpet in the elementary school had to be ripped out.

Mold delayed classes for two weeks for high school students in Southbridge, Mass.

“We are just watching the bills come in,” said Superintendent JoAnn Austin. So far, the district has spent about $73,000, and it’s still taking inventory of damaged school supplies, desks, and books.

“We lost a lot of teaching materials and textbooks, and we had to replace 180 student desks,” she said. “The mold was all over the underside where the desks weren’t laminated.”

In Hinesburg, Vt., elementary students started school but were sent home after four days of classes after mold was found in carpeting.

In North Smithfield, R.I., officials estimated they would spend $200,000 pulling out moldy ceiling tiles and insulation.

New schools proved as vulnerable as old.

“It’s huge,” said William Cooper, superintendent of the Old Rochester School District in Mattapoisett, Mass.

The schools opened on time, but the bill for around-the-clock work after mold got into the inner walls of a year-old elementary school ran to $400,000. Some classroom’s walls had to be torn out back to the studs to rip out infested insulation. The culprit is believed to be condensation around a new air conditioning system used for the first time, he said. The bills are now in the hands of lawyers.

New construction techniques aimed at reducing noise, such as carpeting and dropped ceilings, had made schools more difficult to clean than when walls were plaster and floors were tile, Condon said.

The EPA has developed a protocol of recommendations for schools in which it is suggested that schools worry less about what type of mold they have than getting rid of the stuff.

Any strain can cause problems in overabundance, Benoit said.

In healthy children, it typically causes no more than hay-fever-like eye, nose, and throat symptoms, but those with asthma and other breathing difficulties and immune system problems can be affected more severely, Condon said.

Prevention — including finding and patching water leaks and tossing porous items that have become infested — is the key to keeping out mold.

“The good news is that the steps are relatively easy,” Benoit said. “But the schools may have to spend some money.”