February 2006
Volume V, Issue 1

Dear All,

Welcome to our fourth year of Trapped Air. Our goal is to keep our readership informed on the hot topics and areas that interest you, the IH professional. We continue to encourage you to keep your questions coming in. At times we will adjust our editorial and technical paper schedule in order to bring you topics in which you have expressed immediate interest. This is one such time where we have adjusted our schedule by bumping School IAQ ahead of Meth Lab testing. An article on Meth Lab concerns will appear in our next issue.

Based on the questions we’ve received, schools have been a recent hot topic and on many of your minds in the last few months. Since many school districts are starting proactive programs to monitor IAQ and many of clients have school contracts, we decided to dedicate this issue to IAQ in schools. Randall Fike, Ph.D., writes in this issue “Good Teachers, Good Students, Bad Air.” This article includes an overview of studies made by PATI and what considerations to make regarding mold and VOC levels. We hope you find Randy’s article and related news articles informative.

It’s not too early to think Spring. That also reminds us that we are approaching this year’s AIHA Conference and Expo in Chicago the week of May 15. Plan on stopping by our booth (#751) to renew old friendships and find out what’s new at PATI.

As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas.  Please feel free to forward Trapped Air to others as well as to send any suggestions for future issues our way at trappedair@pati-air.com.

Best Regards, Lester H. Keepper III President

Good Teachers, Good Students, Bad Air

Many school districts are beginning to take a proactive approach to the air quality in their schools and are expanding the scope to include parameters other than CO2, temperature, and humidity. It is well known that high levels of indoor air contaminants can lead to lethargy, illness, inattentiveness, and well as a myriad of other afflictions. Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) has also been linked to the exacerbation of seizures and may have a role in developmental delay in children. These effects are amplified considerably in chemically sensitive individuals. This article is not intended to be a treatise of how indoor air quality impacts children; it is, rather, intended to provide some insight into the nature of the Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) contamination and the most cost-effective way for schools to embark on a testing program that will ensure that they are providing a good educational environment for their staff and students. As a secondary issue, by having a good testing/improvement program, the school system can also take a significant step toward limiting their liability as research correlates more and more afflictions to poor indoor air quality.

Mold Considerations

The current “hot button” (or should I say “crisis de jour”) is mold contamination. Parents of young children are keenly aware of the potential problems associated with mold contamination and many have succumbed to the hype surrounding issue. They are demanding that the schools certify that their buildings are free of mold. An example (worst case, perhaps) of what can happen when there is mold contamination and how the problem was solved are illustrated in the following case study:

In a school, which was the home of the district’s birth-to-6 programs for impaired children, the MoldScan Total Microbial Volatile Organic Compound (MoldScan TMVOC) values in some of the classrooms approached 1,200 ng/L. Based on Prism Analytical Technologies, Inc., (PATI) TMVOC interpretation table, greater than 300 ng/L indicates “severe” mold contamination. In this particular school, symptoms ranged from headaches and nasal, eye, and throat irritation to increased frequency of seizures. Some teachers refused to work in the building and several parents pulled their children out of the school. The school district was considering abandoning the building or making major renovations in an attempt to alleviate the problem. Through some simple investigative work, the problem was shown to be wood chips in the landscaping placed up against the individual room air intakes. Also, the roof runoff was allowed to flow back up against the building and into the wood chips. Removal of the wood chips, installation of downspout extensions, and making a swale along the school totally eliminated the problem. In addition to vastly improving the learning environment of the building occupants, this represented a tremendous financial savings to the school district. The total IH/analytical cost of solving the problem was less than $2,000.

Total VOC Considerations

Reference is made to the following Trapped Air article regarding TVOC. It is suggested that the reader review this article to help understand the nature of TVOC interpretation.

Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs) in the Air

PATI has been involved in many school investigations; however, most of those were instigated because an IAQ problem was known to exist. To obtain a better evaluation of “typical” school IAQ, only those schools where proactive evaluations were conducted (no known IAQ problems) were selected for this summary. 41 schools were identified. While this is not a statistically valid sampling and cannot be considered definitive, it does, however, give insight into some of the IAQ problems schools face. Based on PATI’s data from these schools, TVOC values averaged 3,500 ng/L and ranged from < 200 ng/L to 26,000 ng/L. 29% of the schools had levels < 500 ng/L, which is the maximum allowable level based on LEED USGBC guidelines. The following table breaks down the schools into the various subcategories of TVOC air quality:

From the data above, it is clear that many schools have significant problems with TVOCs. However, there is no set of organic chemicals that is common to all, or even most schools that is responsible for the high TVOC levels. There are some common strains such as the presence of ethanol from antiseptic wipes in grade schools (especially in impaired and pre-kindergarten areas) and the presence of latex and oil-based chemical markers in schools recently painted; however, nearly all schools have their own, singular personality. The sample chemicals listed in the next table, the frequency of identification, and the ranges listed indicate the wide diversity of IAQ situations. Many states have established compound-specific limits for IAQ. The limits presented in the table below are from the State of Michigan (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Remediation and Redevelopment Division Industrial and Commercial II, III, and IV Acceptable Indoor Air Concentrations).

The following are the principal factors in selecting the best test protocol for schools

• Effective for a very wide range of compounds – since nearly every school is different, the only acceptable test must survey a wide spectrum of VOCs

• Cost effective – the testing protocol should not require that a full battery of expensive tests be run at every sampling point.

• Mold Assessment – the test should include an estimate of mold levels without having to take separate samples and perform additional testing

• Expandable – If the IAQ is poor, the school administration must be able to determine the nature of the contamination without the expense of resampling.

PATI’s MoldScanPLUS™ coupled with PATI’s formaldehyde test enables IAQ professionals with school contracts to meet all of the above needs. If the TVOC level is high, a full Air Scan analysis is available with just a phone call, there is no need to resample. In addition, since PATI is a consultative laboratory, our clients enjoy the full support of a staff trained in interpreting IAQ analyses.

Q.  If my results from a MoldScanPLUS™ TVOC analysis are under the USGBC limit of 500 ng/L, can I be sure that there are no IAQ problems?

A.  While there is no guarantee that there are no IAQ problems if the TVOC level is below 500 ng/L (400 ng/L benzene is still above the NIOSH TWA8), Prism’s analysts are all trained, B.S. Chemists who routinely look for “heavy hitters” or other potential problems in samples where the TVOC level is low.

The chemical plant catastrophe on the Songhua River reveals the flipside of China's economic miracle. Most of the country's air and waterways are hopelessly polluted and the government has done little to address the problem. Instead, officials prefer to lie.

Choking on Chemicals in China - By Andreas Lorenz - Read More...

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