Officials Search Classroom for Potential Toxins

Toxicologists and state health officials ripped up carpets and tore apart walls Wednesday in a Saugus portable classroom, looking for potential toxins that may have caused illnesses among several children and teachers.

Officials testing Room 30 at Charles Helmers Elementary School collected numerous samples to determine the levels and types of mold present in the classroom, particularly stachybotrys, a black gelatinous mold that Dr. Gary Ordog, a Santa Clarita toxicologist, contends caused the illnesses.

Jed Waldman, head of the Indoor Air Quality Section of the state Department of Health Services, said one set of tests would compare cultured samples taken from the air inside the portable classroom to the air outside. Other tests, which involved using tape to collect samples of materials beneath carpeting and inside walls, will be studied for dead mold spores.

Health officials say stachybotrys becomes toxic only when it dries and circulates into the air. “If mold has grown, it will have dried by now but would have left its vegetative body,” Waldman said.

Some results of Wednesday’s testing may be available by Friday.

The Saugus Union School District had tested the room and found no traces of stachybotrys, no traces of arsenic and extremely low levels of formaldehyde, all of which Ordog has said were present in high levels in students and teachers he has tested. Many parents were not satisfied with the district’s test results.