The Kanawha County public school system plans to reveal Sunday whether Capital High School will reopen Monday, following Kanawha's attempt to lower levels of mold and carbon dioxide at the school.
School system spokeswoman Briana Warner said Kanawha closed the school Tuesday after results from air sampling throughout the school finished coming in Monday morning.
She said two companies, Charleston-based ASTAR Abatement & Insulation and the international Belfor Property Restoration, have been cleaning 70 of the 188 spaces in the school, including classrooms and other rooms, while custodians are charged with cleaning the rest of the school.
Terry Hollandsworth, the school system's maintenance director, said the testing and cleanup stems from a group of teachers filing an official indoor air quality complaint. Warner said the "first indoor air quality complaint form was issued on Aug. 21" to address three to four rooms.
State law requires "each county board [of education] to investigate all reports of indoor air quality problems within the county" and says any such "complaint found to be valid by the designated [school system] official or officials shall be addressed by forming a plan of correction." West Virginia Board of Education Policy 6202 expands on the law, saying "any party" can file such complaints, but the complaint must include filing an "Indoor Air Quality Complaint Investigation Form" with the principal of the school.
Warner said just three rooms were closed at first: 230-C, 230-F and 231. The rooms are roughly in the same corner of Capital's second story, and 230-F and 231 share a wall.
Ohio- and West Virginia-based Pinnacle Environmental Consultants, Inc., which took the air samples, reported the mold concentration levels found in rooms by the number of spores or fungal structures per cubic meter of air. One of the two categories of mold Pinnacle said needed to be addressed was Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like, a category that includes two separate groups each including at least hundreds of different mold species.
The Pinnacle report says in general that "Dominance in indoor air by species of fungi (molds are fungi) that are not predominant in outdoor air indicates that these fungi are growing in the building and that air quality is degraded."
Mike McCawley, interim chairman of occupational and environmental heath at West Virginia University's School of Public Health, said there aren't any strict numerical standards for how much mold spores in air is too much, largely because individuals' responses to mold vary.
"It's not ever going to be an exact science because when it gets right down to it, it really is an individual reaction to it," McCawley said. "If you talk to five different experts on this, you'll end up with six opinions on what they should have done."
McCawley said the threshold for visible mold is easier: if it's visible, it shouldn't be there. He said porous objects with visible mold on them, like fabrics, should be thrown out.
Room 230-F, one of the three rooms that were closed before the school-wide shutdown, had the highest reported concentration of any category of mold Pinnacle reported on: 65,400 Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like fungal structures per cubic meter. A testing lab said the raw count that generated that number was an estimate "due to high count."
The 65,400 figure was more than 2,400 times the outdoor air concentration of Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like fungal structures on the day that room was tested: Aug. 29, when the sample collected in front of the school showed 27 per cubic meter.
The highest detected outdoor concentration of Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like fungal structures was the 800 per cubic meter detected behind the school on Sept. 8. The Aug. 29 concentration in Room 230-F was about 82 times that Sept. 8 outdoor concentration.
McCawley, who previously worked for 30 years for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and worked on indoor air quality issues, said chicken coop workers are likely exposed to 50,000 spores per cubic meter.
"You shouldn't see that kind of thing in some place other than a chicken coop," McCawley said. "You shouldn't see it in a high school."
But McCawley said it would be "entirely possible" that, even without cleaning, 230-F could be tested again and that level wouldn't be detected. He said it could be a fluke in the sampling method, and noted the single room might not be the source of the mold generation.
He said such a situation calls for cleaning and "there's probably something to be concerned about there." He said the mold may not be the source of health issues being reported.
The other two rooms that were closed first, 230-C and 231, had concentrations of Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like fungal structures of 1,400 per cubic meter and 3,467 per cubic meter, respectively.
Of all the rooms tested on the four dates, Aug. 29 and Sept. 6-8, the only other room to break 10,000 per cubic meter in Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like fungal structures was Room 101, a corner room in the section of the building that's closest to Greenbrier Street.
Pinnacle's report says that all rooms with Aspergillus/Penicillium-Like concentrations of more than 500 spores per cubic meter or any Stachybotrys "were identified to be professionally remediated." Part of the report, provided by Florida-based AEML Inc., which analyzed the samples Pinnacle provided, says Stachybotrys is "often referred to as 'toxic black mold.'"
"They have the ability to produce mycotoxins which may cause a burning sensation in the mouth, throat and nasal passages," the section of the report from AEML says. "Chronic exposure has been known to cause headaches, diarrhea, memory loss and brain damage."
As for carbon dioxide, McCawley said the levels shown in the Capital testing aren't enough to harm people. He said there will be more carbon dioxide in a room when there's more people in it, and carbon dioxide levels are generally a measure of whether ventilation is sufficient rather than a specific health effect.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.