School’s Students Tell of Ailments
Ten students from Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy told a state panel Friday that they got headaches and stomachaches after playing near the sticky, tar-like substance that seeped through the asphalt of their playground.
“I used to walk around the tar when I went to my friend’s area and I used to get bad headaches,” said 5-year-old Nikki Dwyer at a hearing called by the Senate Committee on Toxics and Public Safety Management, chaired by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles).
Mauricio Dortha, 12, said he used to play with the substance “because I didn’t know it was poison. I thought it had nothing to do with what was wrong with me. Every time after school I went home . . . I was all weak.”
The school was closed by the Los Angeles Unified School District in late July after complaints about the seepage, believed to be heavy petroleum byproducts coming from a former dump site on which the school was built.
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