Pungent odor in Estancia High science wing abates but tension lingers

Longtime Estancia High School science teacher Stephen Crenshaw used to take his students on field trips to national parks. He coached soccer, encouraging the Eagles from the sidelines.

But now, following years of exposure to pungent fumes emanating from the walls and floors of his classroom, he says he can no longer do either. He contends that sewage smells, a recurring problem at Estancia’s science wing, are to blame.

For about a decade, strange odors have been reported wafting through the wing’s walls and floors, resulting in consternation among teachers and staff who endured the putrid smells but were unsure of their sources.

Crenshaw, who’s on medical leave, says he suffers migraines nearly every day, all day. “I’m kind of like functioning in a narrow band of something. Sometimes I don’t feel bad, but I don’t feel good.”

He and the teachers union blame the fumes for his condition, but Newport-Mesa Unified administrators, who ran extensive tests at the site, said through a spokeswoman that they never found evidence that the health of faculty, staff or students was ever put at risk.

The conflict came into wider public view at the Aug. 22 school board meeting, when Crenshaw and Britt Dowdy, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, took their issues directly to trustees.

In subsequent interviews, they contended that the odors have been a far more serious matter than the district has let on, as evidenced in the way they were mentioned in a seemingly innocuous report highlighting summertime maintenance at the same board meeting, and called the response slow and inadequate. They said other teachers may have experienced potential side effects from the fumes, including migraine headaches and nausea.

Mark Cygan, chairman of Estancia’s science department, said his colleagues have also complained of sore throats, but they aren’t sure if the gases caused those.

Still, Cygan said, the science teachers have “all been a little bit frustrated in terms of having experienced the odors for so long.”

Newport-Mesa Unified officials, however, say the classrooms have been taken care of. Over the summer, crews repaired several pipes that were not properly capped and, as a result, were allowing odors to seep out.

Furthermore, no students have reported related illnesses to the district administration, district spokeswoman Annette Franco said, and no was ever put at risk.

“Regardless of who is to blame, the important thing to know is that the health and safety of our staff and students was never compromised,” Franco said. “Although odors may have been present, there was no indication that the air was unsafe to any occupant. We remain committed to monitoring the situation throughout the year and maintain safety as our highest priority.”

District officials are also investigating how the pipes were left that way and which contractor or subcontractor might be responsible, she added.

Complaints followed renovations

Estancia’s science wing was upgraded in summer 2008 with voter-approved bond funding.

According to Crenshaw, crews came within a month or two of the 2008-09 school year and tore up floors to install drains for safety showers.

“At some point, not long after, we began to experience a problem with foul sewer gases that seemed to be coming from these drains,” Crenshaw wrote in a personal log chronicling the saga, which he felt would help document his case.

Teachers reported the problem. Custodial staff looked in the ceiling for dead animals. They advised pouring water down the drains.

“Basically, no one was solving the problem,” he said. “That was about as far as it went, usually.”

About a year later, Crenshaw said, a teacher located an unplugged drain access pipe.

But even after properly plugging it, smells — sometimes faint, sometimes strong — periodically returned.

In January 2016, Crenshaw said he could hear mysterious gurgling sounds.

Sewage, he asserted, oozed up from the sinks.

Then one day, a substitute teacher came running into Crenshaw’s room, he said, after sewage spewed upward in her science room and reached the ceiling.

“She had to bail,” Crenshaw recalled.

Crenshaw’s room soon experienced a similar incident. In response, maintenance cleared a sewer line.

When Crenshaw returned to work after that job, “the smell of sewer gas (hydrogen sulfide) was overpowering,” he wrote in his account. “We had to open doors and use a large fan to make the room even close to bearable. This persisted for three days.”

After the incident, he reported in his log having “a raging headache, swollen, watery eyes and impacted, irritated sinuses” each day after school.

Administrators moved him to another classroom. Crenshaw said the school discovered a sewer vent pipe that was supposed to vent to the roof but was plugged on top. It had, however, an opening that allowed sewer gases to vent into his classroom’s ceiling.

Crenshaw said the school fixed that but crews soon found more uncapped pipes that were venting in sewer gas. Those were capped, though Crenshaw said he refused to re-enter his permanent room because an area of the floor appeared to be sinking.

It had curling tiles and something was seeping through the cracks. That problem wasn’t fixed until just before the start of the 2016-17 school year, when crews located another uncapped drain pipe. Instead of a proper plug, according to Crenshaw, the pipe had a rag stuffed into it and some concrete poured over.

Escalating problems

Crenshaw started the 2016-17 school year in his usual classroom but quickly relocated because of the smell.

While visiting the science wing a few days before Christmas 2016, Crenshaw said he noticed a faint smell of gas. Later that day, he said he felt some tightness in his chest, which escalated to breathing troubles. He saw his doctor a few days later and began receiving treatment for asthma, a condition he said he never had before.

His once-occasional migraines became frequent, he said.

In early 2017, he contacted the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers and filed a workman’s compensation claim. He was advised by a workers comp doctor to return to work without any restrictions.

Over spring break this year, Crenshaw was told that maintenance found and fixed three more sources of sewer gas in his room. Crews also found and repaired sources in two other science rooms.

When Tim Marsh, Newport-Mesa’s administrative director of facilities and support services, spoke to the school board Aug. 22, he mentioned properly capping the pipes. He didn’t specify how many uncapped examples his team had found.

According to Franco, the district found 14 instances of improper plumbing work, though it’s unclear whether that figure references only summer or time prior as well.

Crenshaw and the union’s Dowdy estimate that in about 10 years about 25 plumbing problems have been fixed in six classrooms, most of them instances of improper capping. The majority were in Crenshaw’s room.

Cygan said the science department was surprised at the extent of plumbing issues discovered.

Studies address the concerns

The district hired two environmental firms to study the problem this year, according to documents given to the Daily Pilot.

Tustin-based Cardinal Environmental Consultants came in January, where it logged sulfuric “rotten egg” odors and, on one floor drain, a bacteria indicative of sewage contamination.

The company recommended continuing air-quality monitoring and bleaching the area around the contaminated drain.

Cardinal revisited in May, finding no significant levels of hydrogen sulfide.

Later in May, an industrial hygiene consultant, Arcadia-based Executive Environmental, monitored six science classrooms for hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and total volatile organic compounds, and conducted tests on the roof from late May to early July.

Executive concluded the science rooms were safe to occupy under California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.

One expert contacted by the Pilot found the bar set too low.

Michael Kleinman, an adjunct professor in UC Irvine’s Department of Medicine, said testing should go beyond Cal/OSHA standards and adhere to more-stringent state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment standards.

“Sewage gas is an environmental contaminant and is not an expected workplace exposure for the classroom,” said Kleinman, who studies inhalation toxicology and the health effects of air pollution. “Teachers should, in my opinion, have the same protection from ambient pollutant exposure as anyone else in the general public.”

Kleinman said 23 of 43 testing days had classroom air levels with one or more eight-hour average concentrations exceeding the standards set by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment for acute or chronic exposure to hydrogen sulfide.

At those levels, headaches or nausea could easily develop, he said.

“They are definitely above what most people would find to be a problem,” Kleinman said.

Long-term exposure hasn’t been studied enough to make conclusions about possible health effects, according to Kleinman.

Dowdy said his teachers have questioned the district throughout the year as to which standards it would use for its Estancia tests but received no response.

Among Estancia teachers, tensions linger

Dowdy contends the district has downplayed the problem. He pointed blame not at Estancia’s principal and assistant principals — who were all receptive to teacher concerns, he said — but to administrators, who “dragged their feet” on an issue that became evidently serious as early as January 2016.

“There is not a sense of trying to get things out to the public,” Dowdy said in an interview last week. “We’re not trying to fire people up or inflame people … [but the district has] a problem. You need to tell people there’s a problem, and you need to tell people what you’re doing to fix it.”

Dowdy said he hopes the school board spends a “significant amount” of time discussing this issue before the public.

Franco, the district spokeswoman, said Tuesday parents were not notified about the odor issues, but information about it will be sent in an upcoming newsletter.

“Since there wasn’t a health concern, there was not an urgent need to communicate with people outside of the school site,” Franco said.

She added that while Executive Environmental didn’t recommend further air sampling, trustees will consider a contract with the company to complete more classroom air testing, if necessary, at the next board meeting.

Last school year, some Estancia teachers took it upon themselves to notify students, placing signs outside their classrooms saying the rooms are known to have toxic substances.

The union is considering its next steps.

“The federation is not opposed to legal action,” Dowdy said. “We’re not closing the doors yet … we want to protect the health of students, the health of teachers and we want to make sure the taxpayers’ money is appropriately used.

“There is a lot of outrage from the union regarding this entire situation.”

—Staff writer Priscella Vega contributed to this report.

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