THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 8, 1995 TAG: 9503080516
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Teachers dread it. Students crack jokes about it. But anybody who has ever caught a whiff of the rotten-egg smell at Lake Taylor Middle School will tell you the same thing: It stinks. Bad.
``You haven't lived until you smell it,'' first-year principal Toni Portlock, said Tuesday, a day after the latest nasal assault.
``It's very, very unpleasant. Because once you smell it, that's all you can think about until it subsides.''
The offensive odor, traced to gases in the building's plumbing system, has plagued the school periodically for at least the past four years.
It has eluded the best efforts of school maintenance officials to isolate and eliminate it.
``We may get a call in the afternoon and by the time we get over there it's gone,'' said William Wood, director of risk management and safety for Norfolk schools.
``It's been a very tough problem.''
From day to day, nobody knows when it might drop in. It usually doesn't linger, but it leaves a lasting impression.
Parent Deborah Lowden said she was nearly bowled over by the odor when she walked into the school Monday to pick up her daughter, who was complaining of a headache. Lowden, who said she was unaware of the problem, was not happy.
She said she was upset that parents had not been formally notified.
``Children should not be subject to that kind of atmosphere to learn in,'' Lowden said.
Lowden said she became nauseated after about five minutes in the building, and she suspects that her daughter, who later became sick with an upset stomach, was affected by the odor.
Administration officials said the odor never has posed a health risk.
Portlock, who said she was unaware of the problem when she became principal, said she immediately contacted administration officials when she smelled the odor in October or November. She said parents weren't officially notified because testing showed the gases were within safe levels.
Air samples taken outside the building have contained harmless levels of hydrogen sulfide, a potentially poisonous gas that creates the rotten-egg smell, but no traces of it were found inside the school, Wood said.
Officials acknowledged that some people are more sensitive to odors than others and could have a ``psychosomatic'' response to the sewer-gas smell.
``It can be described as a sickening odor,'' Wood said.
In a memo Friday to the school's faculty and staff, Deputy Superintendent J. Frank Sellew said that ``the latest round of inspections and testing with sophisticated instruments again reveals no significant health hazard. . . '' Sellew also outlined measures taken that officials hope will eliminate the odor once and for all.
Sellew said the investigation suggested that prevailing winds and the building's design were partially to blame. When conditions are right, waste gases, normally vented by roof-mounted plumbing vents, apparently are being sucked inside the building by rooftop air-intake systems for heating and air-conditioning.
In response, Wood said, maintenance officials are outfitting about 20 vent pipes with $30 ``caps'' intended to prevent the release of the gases.
Another potential source was traced to an accumulation of waste in a drainage pipe near the building. Officials will attack that problem by regularly cleaning the pipe.
In addition, drain traps will be checked on a regular schedule to ensure they are working properly to reduce the buildup of gases.
``It's been a mystery, but I think they're closing in on it,'' Sellew said. by CNB