This Place Makes Me Sick
Modern, airtight offices are causing more cases of sick-building
syndrome. Just ask Southwest Airlines
By ARNOLD MANN
Bernice Polansky's mysterious symptoms began creeping through
her body in 1989, four years after she started working at
Southwest Airlines' 24-hour San Antonio, Texas, reservations
center, an amphitheater-like building housing 600 agents. First
came the headaches--every day, two hours after
she arrived at work. She noticed other agents bringing aspirin
to work. Anyone who ran out could go down to the
central-console area, where supervisors were dispensing aspirin
from large bottles. Polansky joined the aspirin poppers.
Then came the sinus infections, muscle pain, nausea, dizziness
and fatigue--"a whole body weakness." Others complained of
weakness too, though no one seemed to know the cause. Ambulances
occasionally arrived to treat people for breathing problems,
fainting, seizures, even strokes. Her children were the first to
notice when the logic in her sentences began breaking down. By
1992 Polansky was bedridden and on workmen's comp.
Today 59-year-old Polansky is "better but still not 100%." She
has used up her time on workmen's comp, which she was awarded
for unrelated but disabling ergonomic pain. And she's been
terminated by Southwest for failing to return to work within the
36 months allowed for medical leave. Along with half a dozen
other employees who have spoken out about their health problems,
Polansky is consumed by mounting medical bills, the cost of her
lawsuits against the airline and the air-conditioning company
that serviced the building, and by Southwest's countercharge
that she is an opportunist whose medical problems are unrelated
to the building.
However, interviews with 14 current and past employees, as well
as building-inspection reports obtained by TIME, suggest that
Southwest's San Antonio center is a "sick building" whose
closed-circulation air supply has been contaminated by
toxin-producing molds and bacteria.
Sick-building syndrome, as scientists and health officials call
it, is a disease of modern architecture: sealed,
energy-conserving buildings continually recycle contaminated
air. According to a survey by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA), one-third of the 70 million Americans who
work indoors are quartered in buildings that are breeding
grounds for an array of contaminants, from molds and bacteria to
volatile organic compounds like formaldehyde. A 1996 Cornell
University study found the problem was even worse: in every one
of 35 buildings surveyed for the study, at least 20% of the
occupants had experienced symptoms. "It's very difficult to find
a problem-free building," says Dr. Alan Hedge, author of the
Cornell study and co-author of the book Keeping Buildings
Healthy (John Wiley & Sons; 1998).
Among the formerly sick: Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital,
where 47 nurses wound up on disability leave in 1993 because of
allergic reactions to the latex in surgical gloves that clung to
surfaces in the building; Florida's Martin County Courthouse,
where fungi infestation required a $3.5 million gutting by
workers wearing respirators and bodysuits; even the epa's
Washington offices, where brand-new carpets were blamed for gas
emissions and were removed. OSHA's beleaguered inspectors can't
begin to keep up with the complaints. A whole new business of
industrial-hygiene companies has sprung up, offering everything
from one-shot inspections to year-round prevention programs.
"A basket of symptoms with no clear cause," as one expert termed
it, sick-building syndrome can confine itself to one office or
spread through an entire building. Some workers will get it;
others won't. Symptoms are usually confined to the workplace,
but in some cases, like Polansky's, they can hang on for years,
even after a worker has left a building. According to Dr.
Claudia Miller of the University of Texas Health Science Center
at San Antonio, repeated exposure to toxins given off by molds
and bacteria may hypersensitize people to the point that they
react to even low levels of these toxins. It may also weaken
their tolerance to everyday chemicals in car exhaust, perfumes,
cleaning agents and some foods and drugs.
Southwest's San Antonio mold problem dates back to the 1980s,
but the first clean-up attempt wasn't made until 1994. By that
time, workers say, fungi were literally dropping out of the
ceiling vents into their coffee. When the fabric used as a wall
covering was removed, the wallboards underneath were coated with
black mold. All the renovations, including removal and
replacement of mold-infested carpeting, ceiling tiles and
wallboards, and chemical scouring of the heating, ventilation
and air-conditioning system, were done while employees were
working.
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