The fall of 2005 marked a fresh start for Jackie Pynaert, a veteran teacher beginning a new eighth-grade teaching assignment at Queen Elizabeth II primary school in Petrolia, Ont. Her homeroom was P1, a portable classroom across the hall from two friendly teachers who had a long history with the school.
Still, it wasn't long before Ms. Pynaert, then 42, found herself having a tough time in class.
“I started having flu-like symptoms, chills for two months, and I couldn't shake them,” she said. “I was coughing, wheezing, we're talking coughing until you nearly bring up a lung. I had rashes all over my face.” The students told her that the teacher who had the room before her coughed the same way.
Puzzled, Ms. Pynaert began to dig into building maintenance records. The school where she worked, a one-storey brick building in the Lambton Kent District School Board, had gone through several additions during its 56 years, including one that resulted in a cluster of eight temporary classrooms (one of which was Ms. Pynaert's) being tacked onto the school's west wing to accommodate an influx of students.
Ms. Pynaert was horrified by what she learned from the records. As far back as 2002, teachers were reporting “squishy” floors and rotting wood in the portables. In 2004, teachers were complaining about headaches and constant colds. The last teacher in her room went to the emergency room twice with symptoms similar to her own: breathing difficulties, chronic fatigue, headaches, nausea. He also had painful sores in his nose.
When class was out, his symptoms would fade or disappear.
By December of 2005, Ms. Pynaert's lips were swelling when she entered her classroom, pockets of liquid had begun pouching beneath her eyes and a white, filmy fungus was growing on her face. She also coughed “until I sprayed urine. I was losing bladder control. My bladder muscle was giving out.” She couldn't shake the belief that something in the classrooms was making people sick.
Ms. Pynaert is not the first teacher to develop such a hunch. In nearly every province in recent years, educators have raised alarms about strange illnesses they think are caused by mould.
Health Canada says mould is “toxic,” and no amount of it indoors is safe, but there are no laws or policies that require school boards to search out hidden moulds. And because the boards fall under provincial jurisdiction – and the provinces have no official policies on what specific tests should be done by boards to ensure schools are mould-free – how mould complaints are handled by school boards can vary considerably.
Many whistle-blowers have been able to muster enough public pressure – often with the help of intense local media coverage – to force school administrators to deal with the problem.
However, no group of mould-battling teachers has succeeded in creating a strong enough precedent for subsequent sufferers to draw on. Often, when teachers' symptoms disappear, so does the mould issue from public discourse – until the next round of unknowing teachers is struck.
The battle over mould in Lambton Kent, which covers a sprawling rural area with 67 schools, 54 of which house elementary teachers and students, began brewing more than five years ago, when several teachers from across the district independently began making health complaints.
Some had itchy red rashes, constant congestion, phlegm buildup, ear fungus, bloody noses or hives. For others, there was unexplained facial swelling, skin lumps, growths, coughing attacks, bowel problems, stomachaches, searing headaches and chronic fatigue.
“Everybody had to stay drugged to get through work,” said Johanne Tranquille, a French teacher who had been working in portable classrooms since 1990 – across the hall from Ms. Pynaert – and coughed constantly, broke out in red facial rashes and suffered bad sinus problems.
Ms. Tranquille said she would drag herself to work in spite of her symptoms out of fears that “nobody would help the kids.” But it was tough. “I told my mom one time, ‘I think I'll have to quit teaching. I'm too sick.' ”
Laurel Liddicoat-Newton, an elementary teacher at Lansdowne Public School in Sarnia, had to have an egg-sized growth, which her doctor said “bloomed” because of something in her environment, surgically removed from her neck. Brimming with frustration at unresolved health problems in her school, she joined a health and safety committee in hopes of spurring a fix.
