Education Week - February 1, 2023 - 12

Burlington High School in Vermont shut down in fall 2020 after high levels of PCBs were discovered in parts of the campus. The building is slated for demolition in February.
'The Building
Was Sick'
PCBs Pose an
Environmental
Crisis for
Schools
By Mark Lieberman
Photos by Luke Awtry
for Education Week
Burlington, Vt.
school when the old building shut down. " All of a sudden, we were
hit with PCBs, and now we're backtracking. "
I
12 | EDUCATION WEEK | February 1, 2023 | www.edweek.org
n late August 2020, Beth Fialko-Casey pulled into the
parking lot at Burlington High School in Vermont for
her first day back to in-person teaching since the pandemic
began.
But as the English teacher and president of the local
teachers' union stepped out of her car, she confronted
an unfamiliar sight: The six brown buildings that make up the
campus were covered in caution tape. Hazmat signs dotted the
ground.
She was concerned-but not exactly surprised.
" It was no shock to any of us that our building was a hazmat
site, " Fialko-Casey said. Her workplace of nearly 15 years had
long endured mold, rain leaking into the building, drafts and heat
surges, even sewage backups. " We could have told you that without
any testing. ... It was just this sense that the building was sick. "
This time, the diagnosis was terminal. The culprit was the
discovery of chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or
PCBs-contamination that would lead to shutdown of the building
and transfer of all students and staff.
Burlington's experience is a cautionary tale for school administrators
nationwide.
Persistent and pernicious, PCBs lurk in thousands of school
buildings around the country where they were used in construction
materials decades ago. Their presence can jeopardize the
health and safety of students and staff if they're not handled
proactively, and their detection and removal can upend school
operations.
" Even really good facilities managers who know their buildings
pretty well, and have the right interests in mind, unless they
go through light fixtures and ceilings with an eye toward this
particular problem, they may not know they have it, " said Elinor
Fanning, a toxicologist for the Washington state health department.
" You may not know you have a problem until you have a
bigger problem. "
In Burlington, students found out after the first day of a new
school year that they wouldn't be returning to the high school
building. The news hit hard.
" We all thought, 'The pandemic hit us pretty bad. OK, now
we're starting the school year, things are starting to get back
to normal,' " said Gussie Guyette, who was a sophomore at the
Why schools are at risk
PCBs were manufactured in the United States from the 1930s
to the late 1970s for a variety of purposes. Builders loved them
because they helped ensure that caulking to keep materials together
would last longer instead of drying out.
They're ubiquitous in school buildings from the 1950s to the
late 1970s. Bob Herrick, a public-health researcher for Harvard
University, estimates roughly one-third of the nation's 130,000
school buildings could have caulk that contains PCBs-and even
more may have PCBs in light fixtures, ceiling and floor tiles,
paint chips, the soil, and the air. Herrick has contributed testimony
on behalf of plaintiffs in legal cases against Monsanto, the
company that manufactured PCBs.
Prolonged exposure to the highly toxic chemicals is dangerous
to humans, according to researchers and governments
across the world. PCBs increase the risk of chronic diseases like
cancer and short-term symptoms like diminished attention span
and difficulty breathing. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency in 1979 banned their manufacture.
" You can think of it as being a sister or brother to lead and asbestos, "
said Bernie Mizula, an industrial hygienist for the International
Union of Painters and Allied Trades. In recent decades,
both of those chemicals have sparked a wide range of laws and
regulations as schools grapple with the threats posed by leaving
them alone and by disrupting operations to remove them.
Meanwhile, a handful of schools have stumbled across PCBs
in the last few decades, usually while preparing for a long-awaited
renovation project.
Thanks to chronic underfunding of school facilities, thousands
more school districts nationwide lack the knowledge and
resources to overcome the discovery of a deadly chemical that
may very well be lurking in their buildings. Some researchers estimate
$25 billion to $50 billion might be necessary to fully remove
PCBs from all schools nationwide.
Kevin Coghlan has been conducting PCB testing in schools
since the late 1990s.
" We are finding health effects at lower and lower levels.
They're subtle, but they're real, " said Coghlan, the president

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