The measures to remove and prevent the spread of mold at Cookeville’s Cornerstone Elementary School appear to be working.
Putnam County Deputy Director of Schools Tim Martin said the building’s since-resolved HVAC issues may be to blame for the mold’s initial growth. Martin said there have been no new mold complaints since Cornerstone underwent several mitigation projects. Martin said the mold prevention effort continues.
“There are environmental companies around here that can test air and any kind of impurities in the air and things like that,” Martin said. “And we do quite frankly spend quite a bit of money having stuff like that done to make sure that we either don’t have any problems or that we can take care of any problems that arise.”
Martin said a remediation company cleaned up the mold after it was first detected, and affected areas have since been tested to ensure it has not came back. Martin said air purification systems were installed in air handling units to prevent future issues.
Martin said interior areas of Cornerstone had commercial dehumidifiers installed. Martin said these areas include the library and surrounding rooms, which lack windows and access to outdoor areas. The dehumidifiers installed to help improve circulation in those spaces.
Martin said this summer, there were changes to the flooring at Cornerstone, most notably the carpet.
“Of course, carpet holds on to humidity, especially large areas of carpet,” Martin said. “So we went in there and took the carpet out of the library and out of all the office spaces around the library, replaced that with tile, that’s the same kind of tile that’s in the rest of the school and in most of our buildings. And so far, we feel like we’ve been pretty successful.”
Martin said mold could have become a problem in the schools if there was enough of it, as high volumes of mold can cause health challenges.
“We did test several classrooms,” Martin said. “We did not find any, according to the testing company, that was high enough that would cause issues in most people. You may have somebody who’s particularly because of a health issue or something that they have that they may be susceptible to something like that, but what was there in the classrooms was not out of range for most people.”
Martin said there was one storage room with a high mold concentration of work. He said there was a lot of work that needed to be done on that room. Martin said all of the mold removal and prevention work done over the last several months will continue to make things better.