Originally ran in California Job Journal, April 16, 2000.
by Kathy Masera, publisher
California Job Journal
PREVIOUSLY: A broken water pipe flooded a portion of California Job Journal's offices on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but our landlord - Pacific Gulf Properties - delayed cleanup of the soaked carpeting for several days. When staff members began reporting an unusual number of allergic reactions and ailments, an environmental scientist discovered mold concentrations in the carpeting and spore counts in the air so alarming that we were advised to evacuate immediately. An invisible army of toxic microorganisms had so permeated the premises that nothing could be removed without first undergoing extensive decontamination.
In an instant exodus over New Year's weekend, we moved our 30-person publishing business into little more than half our previous space, taking only the most essential equipment and files. We expected to operate out of temporary quarters for about a month while the contaminated building and most of our belongings were cleaned up. However, it soon became apparent we were plagued not only by mold, but also by a landlord reluctant to take responsibility for the fiasco, and a system lacking the regulatory power to do much about it.
As part of their continuing coverage on the health hazards posed by toxic mold, three Sacramento television stations broadcast our story in early March. One of the cameramen, wanting to film the scene of the grime - the interior of the office we had evacuated two months earlier - slipped inside for a quick video tour while a more cautious TV reporter waited outside.
On their way back to the studio, the news team's story took a very personal turn when the camera operator's nose suddenly started bleeding. For nearly an hour he struggled to stop what he described as the worst nosebleed of his life.
Welcome to the club, I thought. Our contaminated building had claimed another victim.
There have been so many nosebleeds, I've lost count. The cameraman's affliction was nothing new - yet it was nonetheless startling because he had become a victim in a matter of mere minutes. More than sixty days after our emergency evacuation and despite the removal of all furniture, carpeting, ceiling insulation and some ducting, our abandoned office remained highly toxic.
As we learned more about how mold spreads and proliferates, I realized that some of the victims of our office plague had never even set foot in the building.
I recalled that in the last few weeks of December my two German shepherds had been behaving oddly. By the time I took ill, several days after the intense toxic exposure of our evacuation, my dogs had become sick as well. They were listless, wouldn't eat, and exhibited a similar level of intestinal distress. Was it just a coincidence?
I soon learned the answer from our environmental scientist, Mark Pheatt of Atlantic Pacific Environmental. He suspected I was the one who'd been poisoning my pets, bringing the office contamination home to them all through December.
Whenever I arrived from work, the dogs seemed even more excited to see me than usual. They were extraordinarily fascinated by the scent of my clothes, pestering me incessantly. And the laundry hamper was another magnet for their snuffling noses. According to Mark, while I could not see or smell the mold, the scent would be obvious to a German shepherd, whose keen sense of smell is 100 times greater than humans. With each excited sniff, my dogs were getting a snoot full of toxic spores, more than enough to make them sick. The dogs and I spent that first week in January recuperating together.
We weren't alone.
So many staff members continued to be sick in January - weeks after the evacuation - that Kaiser Permanente, our company's healthcare provider, deemed it more practical for the doctor to visit us, rather than vice versa. The head of the Department of Occupational Medicine, a recognized authority in Northern California on the health effects of toxic mold, made a house-call to our temporary quarters in mid-January.
Dr. Peter Yip explained to the staff that mold's dangers were still the subject of debate within the medical community. Some doctors see the reactions to mold as allergic irritations caused by the dust-like spores, while a growing number of their colleagues believe that a dangerous toxin triggers the acute symptoms.
Regardless, Dr. Yip said, we had done the most important thing - flee the contaminated site. To purge our systems of the toxins, he prescribed lots of water and exercise to speed up our metabolism. He explained that, for the most part, the effects of the exposure were temporary, but that rates of recovery typically vary from three weeks to three months depending on the individual.
The news was reassuring; recovery was just a matter of time. But in late January and early February, the Job Journal was hit by another wave of upper respiratory, flu-like illnesses. Then, my health took a serious turn for the worse when a second lung infection triggered by the mold exposure almost hospitalized me again. And a tooth that began to ache in January wasn't improving.
When I was well enough to see my dentist, I learned that it was not unusual for patients to lose teeth from mold-induced sinus infections. His diagnosis: a root canal may be necessary if the area does not respond to medication.
Other complications are even more troubling. Watching a TV news magazine's report on hazardous molds, I did a double take when they mentioned hand tremors as a common side-effect caused by neurological damage. Coincidentally, my husband Clayton has been experiencing such tremors for a number of months.
As we enter our 16th week in "temporary" quarters, I have come to appreciate the power of the poisonous punch packed by mold. Many members of our staff continue to battle effects of the toxic exposure. Symptoms have included sinus infections, coughs, allergic reactions, earaches, headaches, sore throats - the list seems endless.
Everything around me seems to have been touched by the contamination - my husband, our staff, the office furnishings, our business growth, and my home. And I've noticed some short-term memory loss, another symptom experts have associated with toxic mold exposure. Yet there are some things I wish I could forget.
When we first learned an evacuation was imminent, we agreed to a straightforward 3-step plan of action with the scientists and our landlord, Pacific Gulf Properties. First phase, get us evacuated; next, decontaminate our equipment and files, storing what wouldn't fit in our cramped temporary quarters; finally, decontaminate and remodel our polluted office and move us back in by late January.
We got the plan rolling and completed phase one over New Year's weekend. We hadn't been in the temporary office even one day, however, when the wheels starting coming off phase two. The regional manager for Pacific Gulf Properties (PGP) apparently hit the roof when he got the first bills for the weekend evacuation from our environmental scientist and SpaceCon, the decontamination specialists. He abruptly fired them both.
I couldn't believe it. When I questioned him about his rash decision, the regional manager objected that the costs were too high, though he admitted he had no idea what the going rate was for such specialized services.
I reminded him it was the same 'penny-wise, pound-foolish' behavior that had gotten us all in this mess in the first place. The explosion of our mold growth had been triggered by PGP's property manager delaying the cleanup of our flooded office over the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend.
I strongly urged the regional manager to "do some research, reconsider his ill-advised reaction, and get back to me in 24 hours." He called the next day to announce he had decided to rehire the specialists.
Contaminated files and equipment we had left behind would be transferred to SpaceCon's nearby facility where they could be more easily cleaned and stored. By the time we needed anything, it would be decontaminated and easily retrievable from SpaceCon's warehouse.
The fatal flaw in that simple plan was that SpaceCon was under contract to PGP. They had to wait for a go-ahead before proceeding with the decontamination phase, a go-ahead that never came.
Things were going from bad to worse. PGP decided they would ignore the protocols recommended by our scientist to determine exactly what is contaminated and whether or not items have been successfully decontaminated.
Our research indicates that current scientific procedure requires analyzing core samples of interior walls to determine if mold is present and at what concentrations. Instead, PGP insisted that a visual examination of the walls should be sufficient. If the scientist saw no mold, the remodeling would proceed. From our perspective, this was unacceptable given that most of the mold would be inside the wall, and whatever was on the outside was, for the most part, invisible.
PGP also thought it perfectly reasonable to clean and test only 5 percent of our soft goods (chairs and acoustical panels) instead of the 42 percent considered by our scientist to be the minimum necessary. The careful testing of these items is particularly important because their fabric and stuffing are ideal habitats for mold. Soft goods are generally so difficult (if not impossible) to clean that standard scientific efficacy dictates that these items be destroyed and replaced. The Vice President of Claims from our insurance company cited flooded cars as an example: Waterlogged vehicles could generally be restored - except for the upholstery. It always had to be replaced.
PGP was insisting that our scientist sign off on these non-standard procedures (that he found unacceptable) as a condition of their approving the contract he was promised in December. Furthermore, they refused to pay him for his services until he delivered all the scientific reports on the building's contamination. Since he hadn't been paid, Mark declined.
Three times we scheduled meetings with PGP's corporate representatives to resolve Mark's situation and other issues, and three times the meetings were canceled by PGP at the last minute.
It was one thing for PGP to give us the runaround, but I was particularly incensed about their refusal to pay the environmental scientist for his work done in good faith at their request. Ultimately, our company paid Mark's $15,410 bill.
In corporate America today, too many companies seem to put profits ahead of people. For an expensive project like a mold remediation, they have little incentive to commit the necessary resources.
Pacific Gulf Properties is a very successful real estate investment trust (REIT), with operating profits of over $93 million in 1999. Yet, wherever PGP can save a buck, it's been our experience they'll do it.
The brand new roof recently constructed on our vacated building is so porous, PGP has been told that any further toxic cleanup is impossible until the roof's leaks are fixed. The City of Sacramento red-tagged the project, forcing work to stop until PGP got required building permits and replaced substandard components used in the roof's construction.
Before we moved into our temporary quarters, we were understandably wary. We questioned how a building constructed at the same time as our original office could have a roof just as old that did not leak.
"Just one of those oddities," replied the regional manager. He stated that the roof had only two minor leaks the prior winter, both of which had been repaired.
Yet from mid January through February - a period of incessant rain - the roof sprung a dozen leaks. Each time we called, PGP would send over repairmen who at one point confessed that so much patchwork had been done in one area, they could no longer find the original roof.
Still, we wondered why, if the roof had been leaking, the carpet had no stains. In March, we learned the truth from a neighboring tenant.
Before we moved in, the landlord had installed new carpeting and painted the walls. The new carpet created a temporary barrier that will protect us from contamination for the time being - as long as the weather remains dry.
It turns out the roof on our temporary building had been a sieve for some time. It was so porous that the office next door had one area of their ceiling dubbed "the waterfall," where they'd been forced to place a large tub they call their kiddy pool.
When our neighbors learned about how mold proliferates, they became concerned and had their own tests done. The news was not good. The scientist discovered several hot spots of extremely toxic aspergillis niger. One area registered a level 2000 times higher than the offices we'd evacuated.
Incredibly, we find ourselves the tenant of another sick building.
After the neighboring tenant started voicing their mold concerns, we received notice that the landlord was at long last going to replace the roof on our temporary building. However, our scientist was concerned the repair work could trigger another epidemic. Mark feared that pounding on the roof would create a new source of contamination - the mold that was undoubtedly present on the underside of the roof and above the ceiling due to the extraordinary number of roof leaks in this building over the years. PGP's own advisory warned that the roofing project would almost certainly rain dust and debris on the office.
And then it hit us. The bulk of our staff had started becoming seriously ill the week a new roof was put on our old building. The pounding had stirred up toxic spores in the ceiling into a warring frenzy.
Mark advised that the work should not proceed without PGP implementing some engineering controls to contain the dust storm; dust monitors would have to be installed and lab samples taken.
The landlord agreed to delay the job, though not without questioning our motives.
In a letter to our lawyer, PGP's corporate attorney wrote that our opposition to the scheduled roof replacement was "nothing more than a continuing pattern on the part of California Job Journal to disingenuously attempt to manufacture 'damages' to assert against Pacific Gulf Properties, Inc."
Like we need to "manufacture" damages. Unquestionably, this whole sorry and unnecessary saga has been a major distraction to our business. Instead of devoting ourselves to helping readers find work and improve their careers, too much of our time is spent dealing with doctors, lawyers, scientists, and insurance adjusters.
What started out as a gentlemen's agreement to do the right thing has now collapsed into a war of words between attorneys. We hope to put all this behind us sooner rather than later, but we will continue the work to raise awareness about toxic mold and the need to address this serious public health hazard.
Part III Sidebar - There Out to Be a Law
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