Toxic PCBs Festered at This Public School for Eight Years as Students and Teachers Grew Sicker
For Michelle Leahy, it started with headaches, inflamed rashes on her arms and legs, and blisters in her mouth.
Some students and staff at Sky Valley Education Center, an alternative public school in Monroe, also had strange symptoms: cognitive problems, skin cysts, girls as young as 6 suddenly hitting puberty.
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Leahy, like others, eventually became too sick to return to campus. She developed uterine cancer as her other symptoms escalated.
Who would ever think that the job that you love was making you sick? Leahy, 62, said.
She didnt know it then, about seven years ago, but her classroom contained some of the highest levels of toxic chemicals found at Sky Valley. Inspections and environmental testing across campus found an amalgam of harmful environmental conditions, including very high levels of carbon dioxide, poor air ventilation and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a banned, synthetic chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency has linked to some cancers and other illnesses.
https://www.propublica.org/article/toxic-pcbs-festered-at-this-public-school-for-eight-years-as-students-and-teachers-grew-sicker