DECEMBER 21, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 25 (Page "2")
This Place Makes Me Sick
Modern, airtight offices are causing more cases of sick-building
syndrome. Just ask Southwest Airlines
By ARNOLD MANN
Inspection reports from 1995 and 1996 obtained by TIME reveal
that a wide variety of active molds, including Stachybotrys and
Penicillium, continued to grow inside the building, alongside
bacterial levels that were 200 times as great as OSHA's
suggested "contamination threshold." Yet the '96 report,
prepared by Crawford Risk Control Services for Southwest's
insurance company, rated airborne spore counts inside the
building as "normal" compared with those outside. Reviewing this
record, Dr. David Straus of Texas Tech University's Health
Sciences Center observed, "There's nothing normal about
Stachybotrys. It produces a bad toxin. That's all I can say."
Moreover, argues Cornell's Alan Hedge, the inspectors "only took
air samples on one day, and fungi don't produce spores all the
time. Typically, you [sample] over a series of days." Testing
for mycotoxins and bacterial endotoxins, experts agree, might
have told a different story.
Despite these expert reviews, Southwest maintains that the
company is the victim of a litigious campaign inspired by
Houston immunotoxicologist Andrew Campbell, who first diagnosed
sick-building syndrome in Polansky and 12 of her co-workers in
1994. Campbell, they say, is a biased observer, known for
diagnosing sick-building syndrome and other maladies based on
what the airline says is questionable evidence.
And yet, in part because of information gathered by TIME,
Southwest has hired an environmental-engineering firm, Air
Quality Sciences of Atlanta, to conduct a complete hygiene
inspection of the San Antonio center. The building undergoes
annual cleanings and monthly inspections, asserts Ginger
Hardage, vice president of public relations for Southwest. "We
are known as a company that cares for its people," she says.
Employees insist, however, that management has known about the
problem for years--and actively concealed it. In 1992 OSHA fined
the airline for its failure to maintain complete records of
employee illnesses and injuries at the center for each year
since 1987, with an additional fine for failing to record
descriptions of illnesses and injuries in 80 cases during 1992
alone. According to Hardage, the company has since complied, and
the fines have been reduced.
Though some supervisors at the center are said to be sick
themselves, employees say these managers have participated in
the cover-up. One employee says that her supervisor helped her
rewrite her resignation letter, allegedly instructing her to say
she "loved the company and was leaving because I wanted to
retire," rather than state the real reason, which was her
health. That way, she would be able to come back to work if she
wanted to. The airline says it knows nothing of this.
Fear of job loss appears to be a key factor in a widespread
reluctance among staff members to speak openly about the
problem. Many of the center's employees are working mothers
afraid of being stranded, like Polansky, without company medical
insurance. A 56-year-old male employee, who says he has been
sick since he went to work for Southwest in 1992, consulted with
his union representative and decided not to speak to TIME on the
record; he was afraid going public would get him fired.
An outside inspector who spoke to TIME says a number of workers
came up to him during his inspection, telling him about their
health problems. "We've never discouraged communication,"
maintains Southwest spokeswoman Hardage. Yet the same inspector
described efforts on the part of management to get him to alter
his report so as to make the building look "less bad." Hardage
says this never happened.
Except through the lawsuits that have been filed, most of the
sick remain silent; $20 an hour is hard to find in San Antonio,
not to mention profit sharing. "We went over the billion-dollar
mark [in revenues] in June of this year," says a long-term
employee who has the full array of symptoms, including memory
loss and "a thing on my leg." It's "bigger than a silver dollar
now," she says. "I just wish they knew how many people in this
building are sick."
They do, and it may just close the building. "They said that's
the only alternative we've got," says Renee Cicero, local
representative for the Air Transport Union. Cicero claims her
hands have been tied because no one is filing formal complaints.
Then the question will be what to do with the people who are
still sick and out of work. "That," says Cicero, "will be
another mess."
For further information about sick-building syndrome, contact
the EPA's Indoor Air Quality Information Clearing House at
800-438-4318, or visit the agency's website, with links to other
indoor-air-quality information websites, at
www.epa.gov/iaq.END
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