North Carolina state lawmakers have proposed spending up to $180 million to renovate a North Carolina State University building that has been linked to carcinogens and has been closed since November.
The university closed Poe Hall after polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were found in the structure, a situation that has thrust the public institution into the spotlight of controversy and legal battles, as about 200 former students and staff with cancer believe their diagnoses were related to their time spent in the building.
Now, attorneys for North Carolina State University are petitioning the state Supreme Court to block independent testing at Poe Hall, the building that has long housed the university’s psychology and education departments. This month, the court granted a temporary halt to independent testing while it considers the issue. carolina journal It has been reported.
PCBs are human carcinogens commonly used in commercial and industrial products until they were banned in 1979. Poe Hall was built in 1971.
As of June 19, WRAL, a Raleigh-based news television station that conducted extensive research on the topic, reported that “more than 200 cases of cancer have been reported in people who worked or studied in the building.”
“Many of those who reported illness [WRAL] 5 On Your Side expressed its frustration with NC State leaders, saying the university has been slow to take action and unresponsive to their concerns.”
Several top NCSU officials did not respond to emails. College revision Comments are sought, but the agency has created a dedicated webpage to address concerns and answer questions.
“When planning building remediation and renovation, our goal is to provide a safe and stable environment for all affected people during and after the transition period,” it states.
Asked to reflect on the concerns, David O. Carpenter, a public health physician at the University at Albany School of Public Health and Department of Environmental Health Sciences, said: college fix The International Agency for Research on Cancer identifies melanoma, female breast cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma as the most well-documented cancers linked to PCBs, but they are not the only cancers, the email said.
“In my opinion,” Carpenter added, “PCBs increase the risk of all types of cancer.”
As NC State Provost Warrick Arden explained in a March webinar, health and safety concerns involving possible PCBs, lead, and asbestos in Poe Hall were first reported to the school’s Environmental Health and Safety Department by an employee in August 2023.
According to Arden, preliminary tests conducted later in the fall showed lead and asbestos levels were within acceptable limits, and based on preliminary test results for PCBs in specific areas of Poe Hall, Arden and NCSU President Randy Woodson closed the building in November and ordered more comprehensive testing “out of an abundance of caution.”
Woodson added that the university is currently working with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to study the situation and is following Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.
But WRAL News' investigative reporting paints a more complicated picture.
According to a timeline posted on the WRAL website, NC State first recognized “the presence of dangerous levels of PCBs in exterior caulking” in 2018, and a former NC State employee reported in 2020 that “multiple cases of breast cancer occurred in Four Hole.” “Notified the university.
Previous reporting by WRAL has shown that there have been concerns about air quality in Four Holes since 2012.
But according to a timeline compiled by WRAL, the university only took action in August 2023 after health and safety concerns were reported to several government agencies, including the EPA and the North Carolina Department of Labor.
“It’s a really important thing,” says Darren Masier, an assistant professor of human resource management at Meredith College in Raleigh, who earned his doctorate from NCSU in 2013. College revision He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia last summer.
He said in a phone interview in mid-June that he decided to contact a lawyer after realizing that several former graduate assistants he knew at NC State who had spent significant time in Poe Hall were also dealing with serious illnesses. .
“I became the petitioner for us to go in there and do our own private investigation,” said Masier, who was skeptical of administrators’ handling of Poe Hall’s PCB testing.
greater customs correction He believes officials have known about the health risks of the pores for longer than they have publicly spoken about them.
“I think they knew there was a problem with that building, and I don’t think they responded as quickly as they should have,” he said.
The carpenter said Fixes He believes there are “several major problems” with the sampling that has been done at Poe Hall to date, criticizing the technical aspects of the methods, measurements and analysis performed, particularly with regard to air sampling.
Asked whether better tests could determine whether Masier and others' cancer diagnoses could be linked to their time in the building, Carpenter said, “It might be possible, but it's very difficult.”
“Cancer is a common disease, and we need to show that people who work in buildings have a much higher incidence of cancer than people who don't work in buildings.”
When asked in an interview correctionMasier said this is what he hopes to gain from the lawsuit, which occurred before the state Supreme Court's ruling: “All we wanted to do was bring in an expert to do some research and get some answers about potential PCBs connected to the caulking and HVAC systems.”
“If you have numbers that are really not good, you want to let your doctor know as soon as possible so he or she can see it,” Masier said. Toxicity?
“Who knows, maybe it will help my healing or that of someone else?”
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Image: WRAL screenshot
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