that's racist!
always tryin to keep us down.

Cue parents suing for Precious Little Snowflakes' sniffles & headaches in 3... 2... 1...

/not that I blame them

I for one am glad they kept the black mold quiet. Nothing is worse than noisy black mold.

Danger Avoid Death: I for one am glad they kept the black mold quiet. Nothing is worse than noisy black mold.

Keep Sharpton out of this.

Black mold....Texas tea...

Skiiiiiinnnnner!

Former Penn State Daily Collegian writer must have written that uncoherent article. I couldn't figure out when if even the mold was removed.

FTA: "All I'm saying is I don't remember everything. It was found. It was abated," Barto said in a February interview.

What a waste. They should have served it in the school cafeteria as vegetarian stew.

/Waste Not, Do Not Want

aerojockey: Former Penn State Daily Collegian writer must have written that uncoherent article. I couldn't figure out when if even the mold was removed.

So I'm not the only one who had trouble following that article, then, eh?

notice how only the black mold is a problem? they'd probably pay extra for the white mold. maybe they could compromise with a nice jello mold.

You know you else had black mold in their dwelling.....



That's right. Dr. Cuddy.

Mold-B-Gone:

Not reported, the black mold was found to be creeping slowly towards the bike racks.

Welcome to Sunshine Week, which is to newspapers as sweeps weeks is to TV.

If they put a little more effort into editing the damn story instead of touting their 'investigative' prowess and public records requests, you might have been able to understand what the hell happened here.

SickleCycle:, damn you for making me feel guilty for laughing... wait, they don't feel guilty on BET when they make fun of ME...

bayoukitty: If they put a little more effort into editing the damn story instead of touting their 'investigative' prowess and public records requests, you might have been able to understand what the hell happened here.

Oh! Oh! I can summarize!!!

::A-hem::

While removing asbestos, they found mold. No one got sick, it had been there a while, and once it was found, it was removed. Some mold is bad, some isn't (I found THAT info from FTFA!!!).

The Newspaper then reported on the evil EVIL school for... wait, what?

Local resident and creeping mold expert Jordy Verrill was unavailable for comment.

Where is the photo of the 'That's Racist' kid??!!

hahaha!
well the mold was growing the the wrestling gym, right? and they say they don't know what is causing the mold growth? hahaha!
STUPID!

JimStarkBand:

::A-hem::

While removing asbestos, they found mold. No one got sick, it had been there a while, and once it was found, it was removed. Some mold is bad, some isn't (I found THAT info from FTFA!!!).

The Newspaper then reported on the evil EVIL school for... wait, what?

Am I wrong, or did it appear from the (rather disjointed) article that the reporter might have orchestrated, or at least been present, at the meeting where the superintendent and the director of the physical plant (Barto) met?

I'd hate for a reporter to be present if my boss had scheduled a beat-down for me. Yeah, it's a publicly-funded entity, but I still think this is overreaching on what appears to be a minor matter.

That said, it appears Barto (and some others in the district) denied there was a mold problem and seemed to engage in a bit of a cover-up, so this may be their karma catching up with them.

Interrupted Infinitum: You know you else had black mold in their dwelling.....



That's right. Dr. Cuddy Cuddly.

/FTFY



BTW, when you GIS Lisa Edelstein, it suggests that you might have meant jennifer morrison... as opposed to the usual "typo" suggestions it offers.

aerojockey: Former Penn State Daily Collegian writer must have written that uncoherent article. I couldn't figure out when if even the mold was removed.

HA HA HA! I havent had an opportunity to laugh at that paper for awhile now that Im out of PSU, thanks for the reminder of all the stupidity it felt the need to put in print.

better to have asbestos.

"More asbestos! More asbestos!"-Bart Simpson.

Interrupted Infinitum: You know you else had black mold in their dwelling.....



That's right. Dr. Cuddy.

But she also had pink thongs, so all is forgiven.

This is similar to a story that came up to me a couple years ago, when I was a local CBS producer.

An 'unnamed' maintenance worker from the local college calls me up to inform me that he was part of a crew that discovered the local student dorms have a big, dangerous problem, and that they're going to be closed & demolished next year. Apparently the bolts/girders that hold each floor to the main center structure are beginning to rust and sag much earlier than anticipated and won't hold up in even the smallest earthquake. They were a major hazard and the students are living in them. The dorms are a pair of 7 story tall buildings, that hold some 500+ students.

I call the college to get an 'official' word, "Oh, we cant comment/don't know about. We however are planning on 'renovating' and improving student housing on campus and will be closing those particular dorms."

Since the whisleblower didn't want to go on camera, and lose his job, to tell what's going on, and the college wouldn't say anything on camera or let us see the properties, we couldn't run the story since it couldn't be attributed to anyone. Weak sauce.

Here's all they ever ended up saying about it (new window).

MrSteve007: This is similar to a story that came up to me a couple years ago, when I was a local CBS producer.

An 'unnamed' maintenance worker from the local college calls me up to inform me that he was part of a crew that discovered the local student dorms have a big, dangerous problem, and that they're going to be closed & demolished next year. Apparently the bolts/girders that hold each floor to the main center structure are beginning to rust and sag much earlier than anticipated and won't hold up in even the smallest earthquake. They were a major hazard and the students are living in them. The dorms are a pair of 7 story tall buildings, that hold some 500+ students.

I call the college to get an 'official' word, "Oh, we cant comment/don't know about. We however are planning on 'renovating' and improving student housing on campus and will be closing those particular dorms."

Since the whisleblower didn't want to go on camera, and lose his job, to tell what's going on, and the college wouldn't say anything on camera or let us see the properties, we couldn't run the story since it couldn't be attributed to anyone. Weak sauce.

Here's all they ever ended up saying about it (new window).

Could you not have gotten an outside engineer to look at as much as they could get to before getting kicked out?

ssrat: Could you not have gotten an outside engineer to look at as much as they could get to before getting kicked out?

I'm guessing that, being student living, only the police and the school employees are allowed on the grounds without permission from the school of some sort.

Heh, reminds me of my fun days at SFSU. We had a mold problem. Mostly I just sprayed it with bleach, but it kept coming out from places like behind the wall molding and plug sockets and I didn't want to rip those up to get it all and then get charged for damaging the room.

So they called a meeting about it with the university president since apparently the mold problem was pretty big. I took pictures of the stuff on my wall so I could ask about whether or not I would get charged if I pulled the molding off to clean behind it.

So, the meeting goes off, they tell us "oh there's mold but it's contained within the walls and not entering the rooms so it's no threat." I get up during the Q&A phase and ask "So will I get charged for damages if I have to pull up parts of the rug and the molding off the walls to clean it?" And they say "Oh but it's not in the rooms so that's not an issue." So I pull a printout out of my back pocket and say "This is my room 20 minutes ago. Can I do this myself or do I need to call someone else?"

Well I knew I was in trouble when the flashes went off. The answer was a pretty calm "Call building maitenance." and I said "Thank you." and left. Next thing I know the school paper is tracking me down on campus and asking if they can come take pictures.

Then local newspapers are calling and asking the same thing.

Then local TV is calling me.

Finally about a week later ABC7 wants to film the room. I'm like guys it's mold. It's a black line of crud along the wall. Why do you need video of it? But they came and filmed and filmed some of the far worse apartments (8x6 foot patch that bulges the carpet up on top of it, etc), and filmed some of the more whiny students about it.

Eventually the building got condemned. The mold had grown in the walls up to the 5th floor by eating some construction adhesive since the building was apparently built out of foam, and it wasn't the right material for anyplace wetter than Phoenix. Good job building it next to a lake in the bay area guys. The new building they tried to set us up in was actually even worse, and wasn't done building on time, so I had to live in some interesting temp housing (oh no a 2 hour bus commute is no problem with an 8am class, and that lead paint and ecoli in the water's no big deal, and the psycho russian exchange student with the knife collection is a great guy once you get to know him) until I managed to move off campus.

Once again I'm proud that my region has made Fark.

My interesting story on "black mold"...

My mother-in-law sold her house and then used part of the proceeds to buy a new, but smaller, house in a new sub-development. She moved all of her stuff in (including many valuable pieces of antique furniture). After a few days, she began complaining about a strange smell, and headaches.

At the time we just thought she was out of her mind - it was a new house, after all - we (meaning my wife and I) thought it was just new carpet and glue outgassing (not a fun thing, but we told her to just open up all the windows). She tried that, nothing worked.

She later moved out, but on a visit back to the house (still noticing the smell), she noticed that the back yard area was flooded, and smelled as well.

Long story short, she got sold a lemon of a house. Cracked foundation (we're in the Phoenix area, the sub-division is in Surprise - heaving of soil - Del Webb's Anthem has similar problems), poor drainage in the backyard...

What "broke the camel's back", though, was that she went back (again) for a visit to the house, and found that a water pipe had burst (remember, this is a new house in Phoenix area - no freezing of pipes or anything) and flooded the house since the last time she was there (a week or so before). They turned the water off, and in the process of finding where the leak was (in a wall) - they found black mold everywhere.

It was of such a concentration and amount that nobody had seen anything like it (the inspectors and testing company she hired to verify the mold issue, and if it would cause her complaints of headaches and other issues). It had obviously been an issue for a very long time.

Her house is still under the new construction warantee, we don't know if she will be smart enough to hire a lawyer (we keep telling her to do so, but she isn't that intelligent) - the company keeps trying to tell her it isn't their fault (crappy construction isn't their fault - right). She doesn't want to live in it - it is likely that since this has been going on for almost a year now that the mold spores are in every piece of furniture in the house. There is no way an abatement team will be able to rid the entire house of the problem, unless they do a tear-down to studs and bleach (and even then, the problem may still persist).

Either the homebuilder or she will get screwed (and given her track record, she doesn't seem to be on the winning end of things), but at least now we don't think she was as crazy as we thought (not really, we still think she is crazy - just not about this problem).

One thing that was funny is that my wife went over to help out with something, and everybody was telling her "Hey, we are going to go and see mom's house and the mold, come with us!". She responded (rightly) with a "Hell NO! I value my health!". They went, all of them came back (just from a few short hours) coughing, sneezing, and with headaches that lasted the rest of the day. Hard to say, but all of those are symptoms of black mold poisoning (the spores are toxic).

They were recently doing some testing for her "funny smell" problem...removal of one of the kitchen walls showed that there was black mold everywhere, likely caused by a

Damnit - shoulda previewed...

Let's keep in mind that of the 28 quadra-gazillion species of fungus on the planet, only 26 quadra-gazillion are black. Of those which appear black, upon visual examination, exactly 6 are harmful if inhaled, and the spore volume must be so high that it's likely your kid has headached because you don't feed him properly, or he does not get enough sleep.

toddhrog: Let's keep in mind that of the 28 quadra-gazillion species of fungus on the planet, only 26 quadra-gazillion are black. Of those which appear black, upon visual examination, exactly 6 are harmful if inhaled, and the spore volume must be so high that it's likely your kid has headached because you don't feed him properly, or he does not get enough sleep.

Ummm, black mold is a pretty common result of certain conditions. And it can be deadly to some people. I'm one of them as I'm highly allergic to it.

I knew when I drove through there on the Interstate and saw the Happy Valley sign: "Must. Not. Stop."