The eight-foot tall Godzilla-like black fungus that had been growing on the wall of the custodial room ten feet from my classroom was gone! Hallelujah!!! As of May 2010, there would be no more contamination from this alpha colony of Aspergillus fumigatus in my school!
In late August of 2010, I began my 22nd school year as a middle school teacher. I had high hopes that after years of bacterial and fungal torture, I would have a chance to go into recovery mode for the first time in over a decade. We had a new principal in the building and no one had reprimanded me in ten months! Things were looking up!
There is, however, no reprieve from the bacterial and fungal hazards in a water-damaged building. One of the most toxigenic molds known to medical science was expanding its area of influence in my school. It loved the cellulose in water-damaged ceiling panels and the paper in books, both of which abound in schools. It is one of the most toxigenic molds known to medical science and the bane of many water-damaged buildings – Chaetomium globosum.
Hi – my name is Lee Thomassen. If you read Dr. Shoemaker’s book Surviving Mold, you might recognize me as the author of chapter 20 (“Teaching in a Water-Damaged School – Fighting for Our Lives”). It is now September of 2011. Being out of the building for seven weeks over the summer did wonders for my “brain fog.” My first experience with VIP (Vasoactive Intestinal Polypeptide) replacement therapy brought all but one of my abnormal blood counts down to normal. I have used this window of opportunity to write with a clear memory a historical account of what I experienced during the 2010-2011 school year.
I wrote chapter 20 in June of 2010 and the roller-coaster ride since then has not abated. All across this country, there are employees, students, renters and home owners who have suffered the ravages of Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. It is a shared experience that we hold in common. What makes this story unique is that I witnessed something truly remarkable – in the fall of 2010, my employer had to sign a Voluntary Resolution Agreement with the Office for Civil Rights, US Department of Education, for violating my rights under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 for discriminating against me after I filed for accommodations relating to my inflammatory response illness. Then in the spring of 2011, a 2nd major Maryland public school system was impacted by Section 504 – it granted disability retirement to a teacher after coming to the conclusion that it could not meet the accommodation requirements contained in her application for accommodations in the water-damaged building where she worked.
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act can be a powerful tool in the battle against employers who refuse to deal with illnesses related to the indoor air environment. Teachers are the largest group of employees in the nation that are exposed to harmful toxins, bacteria and microbes in water-damaged buildings. Children have benefited from these proceedings for decades – now it is time for employees to use Section 504 for their own benefit. According to federal law, any person who works for an organization that receives federal financial assistance can apply for 504 accommodations (just like students can), and that probably applies to every employee involved in public education. Other groups that would be covered include the military, the FAA, WIC, Social Security workers and Postal employees. The list of organizations in the United States that are recipients of federal financial assistance, both inside and outside the federal government, is huge.
In the fall of 2010, my employer suddenly awakened to the threat of what it could mean to be the first school system in the country to have the federal government force them to grant accommodations for disabilities caused by toxigenic mold exposure (and all of the harmful metabolites, cell fragments, actinomycetes and mycobacteria that go hand-in-hand with exposures in water-damaged buildings). They mobilized their enormous resources as the 26th largest school system in the nation. This included their attorneys in the school system’s “Law Cottage” (yes – my school system has a building just for its lawyers – our property tax dollars well spent). They brought together their highly paid engineers and industrial hygienists at the Department of Facilities and the Department of Environmental Services. Our Environmental Services personnel are careful to leave no paper trail with regards to my school (despite the documentation requirements of MOSH, Maryland’s subsidiary of OSHA) and they do no sampling that could produce a lab report that might contradict their position that the building I work in does not have water-intrusion and indoor air quality issues.
The 2010-2011 school year was a David vs. Goliath struggle. I did not have a building full of lawyers, two industrial hygienists and a bunch of building engineers to help me. But I did have weapons that proved to be very powerful.
It is my hope that my on-going historical account of what happened during the 2010-2011 school year may prove useful to those who have to fight the same battles in their schools and water-damaged buildings. In this series of blogs, I will narrate the events that pick-up where Chapter 20 in Surviving Mold left off.
No comments:
Post a Comment