As a Plum Grove Junior High student in the late 1960s, Judy Carlson never gave a second thought to the quality of the air, the material in the floor tile or anything else in the Rolling Meadows school.
And neither did anyone else. School was a place that made you a better person-not a place that made you sick.
Now that Carlson’s 7th-grade son, Chad, is one of the Plum Grove Junior High students who have complained of becoming ill while at the school, she is very eager to learn how the 33-year-old building was designed and constructed-and whether it made her child sick.
Other parents among the 720 students at Plum Grove have voiced similar concerns. Students have complained of being stricken with illnesses ranging from asthma, bloody noses and headaches.
Meanwhile, some of the 60-member staff have reported similar ailments, while a dozen teachers have been diagnosed with cancer over a decade, including five who died of various types of cancer.
With Chad Carlson complaining that his asthma has grown worse since he enrolled in Plum Grove, it’s understandable why his mother now has a different view of the school since when she went there.
“You didn’t hear things like that back then, the cancers and things,” said Carlson, 37. “If someone would have said `sick building,’ it would have been hard to believe. You would have taken it with a grain of salt.”
But her change in attitude toward the school also reflects the growing national consciousness that has taken place over a generation concerning environmental health and air quality.
When Plum Grove was built atop a cornfield in 1961, there were no worries about the toxicity of asbestos or the hazards of high carbon dioxide levels. There was not even a ventilation system installed in the school: Fresh air came in the old-fashioned way, through open doors and windows, unlike the tightly controlled ventilation systems of modern office towers today.
“We as a society have become more aware of environmental conditions in general, not just in schools,” said James Morrissey, an administrator at Community Consolidated School District 15. “When I was in school we didn’t hear about the environment. Now we have units of study that deal with environmental ideas.”
Now, Plum Grove has hired its own set of experts to try to figure out if the five cancer-related deaths and at least four breast cancers, as well as a number of respiratory problems, are related to the building.
A longtime occupational health expert will seek to answer whether the illnesses occurred naturally or were caused by the environment. To help address that question, health questionnaires are being sent to staff and pupils.
Also, an established environmental consulting firm will begin testing the air quality of the entire building next week.
A walk-through on Thursday showed no obvious cancer-causing agents, and previous air-quality tests showed no irregularities, but much of the examination will continue center on the building, now undergoing a $5 million renovation.
Plum Grove underwent its first changes in the late 1960s, when a 28,000-square-foot north wing was added to the building along old Plum Grove Road. The addition included unit ventilators that drew in outside air, but just for that part of the building.
Back then, ventilation wasn’t given nearly the consideration it is today.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of attention paid prior to the energy crisis of the early 1970s,” said Edward Schmidt, an environmental microbiologist at the Servicemaster Co. who conducts air sampling of schools.
“Then they started to construct airtight buildings, where no outside air could come in to conserve energy. It created a total reliance on the indoor ventilation system,” said Schmidt.
At Plum Grove, the current renovations include installing unit ventilators in every room of the entire 96,000-square-foot building, said Morrissey, District 15’s executive director to the superintendent for administrative services.
Another part of the renovations included removing asbestos tiling and pipe insulation last summer, as required by a 1984 state law requiring school districts to formulate plans on how they intend to abate asbestos in their buildings. Prolonged breathing of asbestos particles can cause cancer.
Several other steps have been taken to provide a cleaner environment.
For instance, floors will cleaned and sealed three times. Air sampling, costing a total of $18,000, was conducted three times, and no irregularities were found. Individual window fans were installed in six rooms.
Also, after complaints of odors after floor tiles were removed last summer, all the second-floor rooms of the south wing were shot-blasted and sealed with latex epoxy, at a cost of $11,000.
Worries over the safety of the environment at Plum Grove began last fall, when at least 10 students began suffering from respiratory and other problems. Principal Larry Fleming met with the parents of nine of the students, and gave them the option of moving to another classroom, which one student did.
Fleming also said at least one student and seven teachers this week requested a transfer from the school.
At least two rooms, stage room one and two-both located in the original building-have been closed because there is no ventilation, said administrators. But some teachers have complained the rooms were not sealed off until recently, when the issue escalated.
If the experience is similar to other sick building cases in the suburbs, including recent cases at schools in Hanover Park and Hinsdale, studies and investigations might never uncover the cause of the illnesses of those who teach and learn at Plum Grove.
But administrators, teachers, students and graduates all demand to know the truth.
“I just want to know if I did get this from the school,” said Jeff Hanna, 19, who attended Plum Grove in 1988 and 1989 and was diagnosed with leukemia last November.
“I’d just be angry if they knew about something and didn’t do anything.”
