A valve on a high-pressure waterline to a coffeemaker broke in Hitchcock Hall on March 12, and in the next few months, two women who worked near the flooded kitchen contracted a serious fungal disease. Eight of their co-workers have also reported getting sick.
At first, the link between the flood and the illnesses was a mystery.
But now it appears that the efforts to clean the affected areas spread the fungal spores that sickened the workers in the office suite, according to documents The Lantern obtained last week through a public records request.
Rosemary Hill, director of Engineering Career Services called this a “bungled cleanup” in a Nov. 5th memo.
Workmen started to clean and dry the area near the kitchen the day after the flooding.
Fans were placed in the suite to dry it out. Soaked ceiling tiles in the suite were temporarily removed, according to the memo from Hill.
Some of those tiles were from the dropped ceiling directly above Olga Stavridis’ desk. By late May, she was hospitalized with histoplasmosis and had a fist-sized portion of her lung removed.
Stavridis is an associate director in Engineering Career Services.
For much of March, April and May, the fans were blowing air from the ceiling space above Stavridis’ desk into her room.
In June, Stavridis had her surgery at Riverside Methodist Hospital.
She was diagnosed with lung cancer at the time but has since been diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic with histoplasmosis. Her co-worker, Amy Franklin, an office manager in Engineering Career Services, frequently worked with Stavridis in her office. Franklin became ill in July and was hospitalized in October. She, too, was diagnosed with histoplasmosis.
“Amy got sick in July ‘09 after packing up things in my office with all the dust and debris visible on my belongings,” Stavridis said in an e-mail.
After the flood, the university conducted various inspections and tests.
First, Ohio State inspectors checked the area visually for “mold or harmful bacteria,” university spokeswoman Amy Murray said in an e-mail. The inspectors found no evidence of bird droppings or nesting, she said. Hisplasmosis spores grow in bat and bird
droppings.
“We have large particles of dirt/dust falling and hanging from our vents in Engineering Career Services,” Franklin wrote in a May 29 memo to Chris Mulholand, a facilities engineer and safety officer with the College of Engineering. She asked how to get the vents cleaned.
As workers complained about a lingering odor and Stavridis had her surgery, the university hired a consulting firm to check the area again for mold because administrators originally thought that mold was causing workers to get sick. At this point, no one knew that it was histoplasmosis spores that were likely causing the problems.
Consequently, consultants from Lawhon & Associates checked only for mold and didn’t find any dangerous amounts of it.
In late June, Stavridis was diagnosed with histoplasmosis, and she was certain that it was caused by the air blown into her office. She wanted evidence.
In August, the ceiling tiles in her office were removed. She got possession of some of them and kept them for testing later.
“I am just so sorry that it has taken me losing part of my lung, lymph nodes, damaging steroidal treatment and months of my life to light the fire under someone to address the real problem,” Stavridis said in an 0ct. 27 e-mail to administrators.
“I hope that whoever made the decision to just prop open my ceiling tiles and blow fans down to ‘dry out’ the wretched smell will realize that blowing all those spores of dried up bat dropping into my respiratory system caused me to suffer greatly,” she wrote in the e-mail.
She complained that the cleanup wasn’t done properly and OSU cut corners to save money.
“I can’t believe that I was so lowly regarded and put in harm’s way by my employer to save money,” she wrote.
Stavridis noted that “requests were made 3x for histoplasmosis testing back in June and July.”
In fact, the squabbling about money prompted Hill to use department development money to pay to replace ceiling tiles after “being informed there were no funds to pay for this $300 job,” Hill said in an e-mail.
As more and more workers got sick, OSU brought in yet another consultant, Environmental Health & Engineering. The company tested for histoplasmosis in November.
But they tested a workplace that had been altered dramatically since the flooding and controversial cleanup.
“If you wanted a true reflection of the air quality that I breathed for weeks,” then the consultants should re-create the office conditions from March through May.
She asked in an e-mail if the consultants would be testing with “fans blowing and old ceiling tiles removed.”
After Franklin was diagnosed with histoplasmosis, David Tomasko, associate dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Services, was concerned enough that he sent a memo to staff.
“This is two occurrences within the suite and causes significant concern,” he said in the memo.
Workers were advised to see personal physicians or Employee Health Services and were given an option of working from home.
“Suggesting that people work from home created unintended consequences,” Hill said in her memo. “Those who take seriously their mission to serve student and employer customers simply can’t abandon ship.”
