CHARLESTON, W.Va. — An environmental abatement crew began work Monday morning to remove mold from at least 25 rooms at Capital High School. Most of those rooms are classrooms and many are the same ones where mold developed a year ago and caused school to be cancelled for a week.
“We’ve had some HVAC concerns and we’ve worked with the county maintenance department trying to get those addressed,” said Capital High School Principal Larry Bailey. “We have a 30 year old facility and this is typically the time things start to break down.”
Bailey says through the summer they have struggled to lower the humidity within the building. The HVAC unit apparently has no capability as a dehumidifier.
“We have to look at something that controls the humidity,” said Bailey. “That’s the key is getting moisture out of the building.”
Bailey is hopeful county education officials will examine the problem and held solve the problem in the years to come to keep the mold development within the building from continuing to be an annual problem.
As for how big of a problem mold can pose is very dependent on whose in the building.
“It’s different for each person. Mold is one of those things to which people have different sensitivities,” said Rob Bonham, with Belfor, the company contracted to abate the mold and test air quality. “You and I could walk into a room and on me it would have no effect and on you it might have great effect.”
According to Bonham anyone with an allergy to penicillin is likely to be allergic to mold.
Belfor also conducted abatement last year in some of the same rooms. They’ll scrub and filter the air and remove any possibly places mold spores could hide according to Bonham.
“We’re going through and doing some discovery as well as cleaning,” he said. “We have 25 rooms, but in the discovery process we may add more rooms.”
One of the recommendations has been removal of potential growing spots for the mold, including tennis balls placed on chair legs and in some rooms the carpet has already been replaced with tile.
Bonham’s crew began the process Monday morning. He anticipated they would be done before teachers are due to return to school to start the new year next week.