nothin Ignored School Filters Pose Health Risks | New Haven Independent

Ignored School Filters Pose Health Risks

City of New Haven

Four-year-old air filter at Worthington Hooker.

Thomas Breen Photo

Building Official Turcio at inspection: What about asthma?

It took the Covid-19 pandemic to reveal air filters that had sat collecting dust for years at public schools throughout New Haven.

The air — and the origin of the problems — is still not cleared up.

Newly released reports of Covid-sparked city inspections of 21 schools found that two-thirds had dirty or poorly maintained ventilation systems. About half had air filters that hadn’t been replaced in years prior to October, rather than twice a year as recommended.

While most of these problems have been addressed, new inspections this week discovered more long-unchanged filters.

Air filters are supposed to be changed roughly twice a year, depending on the particular product, according to New Haven Building Official Jim Turcio. When that kind of routine maintenance isn’t done, dirt and grime start to cover the air filter and coat the ducts that circulate air throughout the building.

That is disgusting. Never mind Covid — what about asthma?” Turcio said.

Turcio is part of a multi-agency city pandemic task force that has been inspecting public and commercial buildings throughout town to monitor compliance with Covid-19 restrictions.

When they started hitting school buildings in the fall, they discovered problems that predated and transcended Covid issues: The inspections revealed years of neglect of routine maintenance endangering public health throughout the schools that New Haven rebuilt over two decades as part of a $1.7 billion effort.

The task force this week released a summary of what it has found in those inspections in response to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request from the Independent. Read the summary here. And results of new inspections this week continued to turn up signs of delayed maintenance and neglect.

Schools Superintendent Iline Tracey told the Independent the district has addressed the problems found in the reports. She also anticipates that millions of federal Covid-relief dollars flowing to New Haven will help pay for better HVAC upkeep.

The pre-Covid state of affairs brings up a larger question asked by the Board of Alders at a hearing in January: How did the products of New Haven’s $1.7 billion school construction boom degrade so fast?

Somebody didn’t do the work. Somebody bankrolled the money somewhere,” Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Santana said at the hearing.

The maintenance problems affect students’ abilities to learn — as was the case when Wexler-Grant Community School had to send students home early because the school was too cold. Students are back in the school building now and heat has returned to all areas except the gym.

The problems may also affect students and staff with asthma and other heart and respiratory diseases. These diseases are worse under certain conditions, so it seems likely but not proven that effective air filtration would help, according to industry association and research body ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers).

1 School, 30 Unchanged Filters

Thomas Breen Pre-Pandemic File Photo

Building Official Turcio: On the trail of neglected maintenance.

Turcio saw the grime firsthand. His department accompanied the New Haven Health Department and the Fire Marshal’s Office on inspections of every New Haven school building this fall as part of the district’s efforts to reopen schools safely during the pandemic. In addition to these inspections, the New Haven Board of Education hired the engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill to provide detailed feedback on HVAC safety procedures.

The district has since replaced the air filters at its schools and upgraded the main filters to MERV 13s, which can better block viral particles.

Turcio confirmed that he saw widespread HVAC problems in the fall and that the district has since resolved most of the issues. He and his team have been dropping in on a few schools a week.

Most are getting better. We are still finding some problems,” Turcio said.

On Feb. 5, for example, he found dusty vents at Clinton Avenue School, years of grime on vents at Conte/West Hills Magnet and ducts in need of cleaning at Truman School.

City of New Haven

Fair Haven School still has a huge leak in the auditorium. Water plops into a garbage can (top of two pictures above) set up next to the folding seats, and the ceiling is peeling (pictured above) from the water damage.

This week, Turcio and Brian Wnek from the city’s Bureau of Environmental Health visited three more schools. They found Mauro-Sheridan in pretty good shape. They found vents in the gym at Edgewood School were black from dirt. Despite this, classes were taking place in the gym.

Most alarmingly, Turcio and Wnek found approximately 30 filters in fan coil units between classrooms at Celentano that seemed to have never been changed. The health and science-focused magnet school has reopened for students.

Ottawa-based indoor air quality expert Gemma Kerr said that it was hard to tell without further information whether these old filters constituted a Covid-19 health risk. If Celentano’s main ventilation system has already cleaned the air of Covid particles before they enter the fan coil units to be heated or cooled, the older filters don’t affect much. If the units are cooling or heating air already in the classroom, that could be a problem.

Fuss & O’Neill recommended that Celentano replace the filters in the classroom units prior to reopening the school.

MERV Moves

Emily Hays Photo

Building Manager Chuck Tomaso examines Bishop Woods’ new air filter.

The inspection reports released to the Independent provide a layer of clarity about deferred school building maintenance problems that the already public—but highly technical — Fuss & O’Neill report did not.

The air filters at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School were last changed in 2016. Davis Academy for Arts and Design Innovation Magnet School last replaced its air filters in 2017. King/Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School had filters dating from 2018.

Not every school in the report has a date attached to the last filter change. For example, the report simply lists a need for ventilation maintenance at Worthington Hooker School’s Whitney Avenue location. Turcio remembered, though, that the filter had not been changed in four years.

City of New Haven

An old air filter at Nathan Hale School.

Two schools in the report already had their MERV 13 filters installed: L.W. Beecher and Hill Regional Career High School. The district had also cleaned out ductwork at the Hill-based high school.

The city used Career last spring as a shelter for people experiencing both homelessness and mild cases of Covid-19. At the time of the controversial decision, the city promised to return Career to students cleaner than it had been in a long time.

The building department also found significant problems with the exhaust fans that pull air out of rooms and push it outside. Without those fans working, potentially infectious or hazardous air stays inside the school.

In a report of 24 school inspections from September through October, the department found seven schools with broken exhaust fans. In some cases, the problem clearly could have been prevented with more attention and maintenance.

City of New Haven

For example, New Haven’s Chief Mechanical/Plumbing Inspector Robert Dillon found exhaust fans without covers at Fair Haven School. It looked like someone had noticed that a belt was broken on the fan and had left the cover off. Water and leaves had collected in the cover. Meanwhile, the exhaust fan had rusted and an electrical switch was exposed to the elements.

Instead of replacing the belt and putting the top back on, it’s shot,” Dillon said.

City of New Haven

An uncovered exhaust fan at Fair Haven School, juxtaposed with properly covered fans on another rooftop.

The problem should have appeared at the district’s building management system. Other equipment on the Fair Haven roof was smart” and should have reported problems with the exhaust system to the main brain, the building management system. When the inspectors called those watching that main dashboard though, those watching the dashboard didn’t see any trouble signals coming from Fair Haven School.

We’re on the outside. We’re not accusing anybody, but somebody needs to be assigned to dig into what’s going wrong,” he said.

Who’s Responsible

Christopher Peak Pre-Pandemic File Photo

Go To’s Joseph Barbarotta: We get through 90% of work orders.

Bringing schools up to the Board of Education’s safety standards has been costly. New Haven Public Schools has paid for the upgrades so far with Covid-19 relief dollars and plans to continue to do so.

New Haven Public Schools spent $673,712 from the state discretionary CARES Act dollars in duct cleaning and repair alone. The MERV 13 filters and replacements cost $221,290. The contract with Fuss & O’Neill to check school HVAC systems was $120,000.

Much of the duct cleaning cost could have been avoided with routine maintenance, according to Turcio.

If you change filters twice a year, there’s less cleaning of the ducts needed,” Turcio said.

The New Haven Board of Education has a $1.5 million contract with New Haven-based Go To Commercial Cleaning Services, LLC to maintain school facilities, oversee custodial work and monitor its energy costs. The contract promises that Go To will continue and improve routine preventative maintenance to extend the lifetime of each piece of equipment. It also promises to keep school buildings in line with building codes.

Go To did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

At a recent hearing with the Board of Alders Education Committee, Go To’s Executive Director of Facilities Joseph Barbarotta said that the company helps the district work through 90 percent of the 10,000 work orders the district sees a year. This is despite a flatlined budget for day-to-day maintenance.

Who Gets Hurt

Old air filters definitely stop doing their job and start blocking classrooms from getting outside air, according to Gemma Kerr, an indoor air quality expert with 30 years of volunteering with ASHRAE who recently retired from co-leading an air quality company in Ottawa, Canada.

For most students, this means a stuffy, smelly classroom that might be too hot or too cold. The higher levels of carbon dioxide that those in the classroom breathe out may make students sleepier.

For students with asthma, this means a higher concentration of the dusts, inks and pollutants kicked up in the classroom. This crosses over from a comfort problem to a health problem. Similarly, if the air filters get wet and start growing harmful types of mold, this can worsen allergies and asthma among other health effects.

The ventilation in schools is typically fairly primitive. The filters that get put in there usually need to be replaced between every three months and once a year. If they haven’t been changed for three or four years, that’s definitely bad and should not be allowed,” Kerr said.

School maintenance should be a priority at all times, argued pediatrician and Board of Education member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur.

With the fact that urban communities have a high incidence of asthma, I would think that school buildings would want to stay on top of changing filters,” Jackson-McArthur said.

New Haven Federation of Teachers President Dave Cicarella has seen district administrators pass over opportunities to do this kind of maintenance year after year until Covid-19 hit.

Some items were next year’ projects for seven or eight years. And then something would break and it would be, That’s an expensive piece of equipment. We don’t have the money for that,’” Cicarella said.

Superintendent Tracey said she expects to be able to change the air filters on schedule over the next few years, thanks to $37.7 million in the second round of federal Covid-19 relief. The district is currently putting together the application for the multi-year grant and plans to use some of the money towards personal protective equipment and other safety measures.

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