CHAPTER 25
High Noon in Hampton Bays
Hampton Bays, Long Island: April 23, 2004

1 of 4
go to page 2 | 3 | 4

It was an unlikely group of fighters poised for battle. And here it was, High Noon.
At one end of town were Pat Romanosky, Carolyn Haines and Carolyn’s son Fisher. As they walked into the inevitable onslaught o f Truth versus Defensiveness, Eva Williams and her two children, Matthew and Stephanie, courageously joined the seasoned veterans of the Hampton Bays Mold Wars. James Havens marched into the line of Mold Warriors too. Another teacher joined but prefers to remain anonymous.

Aligned against them were the power of the administration, school board and all the consultants they’d hired. Theirs would be a flimsy defense resting only on bravado and on suppressing e vidence of the adverse health effects caused by the school’s mold problem. There was no turning back now.

Instead of the street dust and climactic shootout of a Western movie, this intense battle would finally decide whether there was mold in the elementary school making people sick. Around the country, there were many interested observers: The lawyers were w atching; the newspapers were watching; other parents were watching. In many legal venues relating to mold, this case had center-stage attention. Everyone knew that school officials would be forced to make a final statement today.

School officials announced repeatedly that they had cleaned up the fungal contamination. “Everything is perfectly safe, and we have the air sampling reports to prove it,” the school officials claimed.

“Your building reports are hopelessly inadequate and worthless,” countered Pat Romanosky. “No testing has been done to look at the ongoing problems with the old gym. You’ve presented information that’s not related to human health at all. Sick people are the marker for sick buildings, not meaningless building inspection reports you’re using in an attempt to obscure the truth. And where are the health surveys that Carolyn Haines has been asking for since Dr. Shoemaker’s June 2003 report, repeated in October 2003 and in the spring of 2004? Why haven’t you announced those findings? And why haven’t you allowed us to wear the personal sampling devices Dr. Joseph Spurgeon suggested we could use? "

“Those building reports are an insult to every parent who has a child in this school.” "Everything is fine,” responded the administration, sidestepping a ny direct answers to the issues and questions raised. “Come back to school. Let’s be one family again. Pat, you can finish your career teaching at the high school. Fisher, you can come back to school—you won’t need a tutor. Our physicians, Dr. Cheung and o ur Hampton Bays pediatrician, have given their word that every- thing is safe.”

Dr. Cheung was a familiar antagonist. He had put his medical theories up against my practical experience in many legal cases in Maryland when he had been State Medical Examiner, losing r epeatedly. He now belongs to a group of physicians who serve as expert witnesses, rarely, if ever, treating patients. They make their money from c onsultant and legal work, usually supporting the defense of a diverse group of insurance companies and corporations. As far as I knew, he still hadn’t treated his first mold patient, though he had plenty of opportunity to talk to and learn from those I had treated. He invariably said these patients didn’t h ave an illness caused by mold, despite the overwhelming scientific and medical data that shouted that mold was indeed the cause.

He and I disagree. Fundamentally.

On the surface, what the Hampton Bays Elementary School Board said sounded good. They had retreated on some of their previous inane statements, and now were willing to admit the s chool had a problem. Earlier the administration had been forced to give up the absurd idea that the building could be made safe e ven while the toxin contaminated carpets covering asbestos fl oor tiles remained in place. Somehow, a State Senator came up with $300,000 from the State to fix that problem. And the school agreed to make some corrections because of the mold contamination—wall-board was ripped out in a few places, closets repaired and windows caulked. “Everything was fine; come back to school,” they cajoled.

The truth of course, was that the administration had done no more than window dressing. They had no reasonable basis to say the school was safe, in fact no basis at all other than the opinion of their witness, Dr. Cheung, and the inexperienced opinion of a prominent local pediatrician. Since he was the leader of a powerful local group of pediatricians, few parents would willingly antagonize him in public by saying he was dead wrong when he lent his name to bolster the comments of Dr. Cheung.

Pat had been the first to take the plunge into the moldy air of the high school in March 2004. After treatment and some extended t ime away from school, she was finally healthy again, though her low MSH was an ominous portent of increased health risk from re-exposure. As the school ramped up the financial pressure on her to return to school, she feared returning to an environment that made her sick. But she was going broke. She had no choice but to return to work—the board had denied her access to the “ borrow bank,” saved vacation or sick days donated by other teachers for use by those who become ill and who need some additional paid days off. Pat didn’t have any time off left and had been out of work on unpaid leave for four months. Her only income was her husband’s meager mayoral salary. So, with just a few months to go to qualify for a 30-year retirement pension, Pat didn’t have any choice—she had to go back into Mold Hall or lose the retirement benefit she had earned.

She came to Pocomoke with her husband Joe for a final check- up. We went over her dilemma: she could stay home and give up the fight, suffer the financial loss and admit she was beaten— even though she knew she was right. Or she could go back into the school with a full dose of CSM to protect her, hoping her previous health breakdown wouldn’t happen again.

“Pat, either way you’re taking a big risk,” I warned. “You’re p rimed for mold illness by your prior illness experience as well as by your specific mold susceptible genotype. If you go back in, trying to buy enough time to get to the financial safety of retirement, you run the risk of permanent health effects.”

I t ried to persuade her that the money was not worth becoming irreversibly ill. “Pat, forget the money they owe you, forget finishing you r career,” I begged. “The school is a trap. You can collect your last few checks and sacrifice your health, or you can get out and get on with a new life. Why can’t they let you finish your time by doing home instruction or something like that?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? They wouldn’t do anything to help me now,” she said. “I’ve got to try to finish my 30 years.”

“If you go back in again, you’ve got to promise to get out as soon as we prove you have reacquired the illness,” I said.

Pat left my office with emotions in complete turmoil. She hadn’t planned to be a troublemaker or to jeopardize her retirement; she was fighting for the rights of her students, her co-workers and herself. She only wanted a safe workplace.

Within three days after she was back in the high school, she was sick again. First her eyes became red and inflamed. Then her throat became sore, she began to cough, and then she started s uffering from cognitive changes and fatigue—the familiar symp- toms piled up on her like a truckload of bricks. She couldn’t go back any more.

“I don’t know what will happen to me now,” she said tearfully.

Carolyn Haines took the High Noon concept one step further when she demanded that the school, Dr. Cheung and the pediatrician take personal responsibility for guaranteeing the safety of the children if they returned to school.

The lawyers were really watching now. Personal guarantees?

next page >>