Some Students Report Health Problems After Pinelands Regional High School Reopens

LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP - Although officials in the Pinelands Regional School District say recent air quality testing was within normal limits, several students reported health problems after the school reopened on Tuesday, according to CBS2 in New York.

Senior Anastasia Freyre said she left school early Tuesday because she felt light-headed and nauseated from odors inside the building.

“The fumes were just really awful," she told CBS. "They were just like really like chemically like bad smelling, and a lot of students coughing and getting migraines, and my eyes like actually started to burn because of how bad it was.”

The district is in the middle of ongoing roofing project.

Many other students have reported headaches, according to the report.

Sophomore Macayla Quigley, a sophomore, has pictures of falling ceiling tiles and what she said was mold.

“There’s dust falling from ceilings onto us,” she said. “It’s so dust that we can write our names, like, in dust in desks.”

TTI Environmental Inc. - the district’s environmental consultant - concluded on Oct. 4 that the most recent testing indicted the results for asbestos were within federal and state standards, Acting Superintendent Cheryl Stevenson said in a message posted on the district website.

TII later concluded verbally that the air quality sampling for volatile organic chemicals (VOC) was also safe for occupancy, she said.

TII also recommended that the district use filters to get rid of "transient substances" that were producing unfamiliar odors, Stevenson said.

"We are committed to implementing frequent, routine air sampling assessments for both asbestos and VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) to verify continued satisfactory air quality, and to avoid any issues that put the safety of our students and staff at risk," she has said.

The district is already using filter units in the high school building to remove substances that are causing odors and will ramp cleaning efforts to minimize dust, she has said.

For test sampling results from last week, click here.

Concerned parents may get more answers tonight at the Board of Education meeting, which starts at 7 p.m.

Photo: Patch file photo.