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There's something in the air
By MARY JACOBY
© St. Petersburg Times, NEW YORK -- One month after Stuyvesant High School students fled from the smoke and debris of the collapsing World Trade Center, the city reopened the doors to this elite public school in a powerful symbol of lower Manhattan's resilience. But then Denise Marsalisi's son, Nick, came home and said, "Look at these things on my arms." Huge red welts had appeared. They soon spread to the sophomore's stomach. Doctors have no explanation. "I just want to know what's wrong with my son," Marsalisi said. "I'm trying not to panic. But process of elimination says it's something with the school." About 100 students and teachers have complained of mysterious headaches, nosebleeds and nasal stuffiness since returning to the school Oct. 9 after a month in temporary quarters. Many other kids also are suffering ailments that they are apparently not reporting to the school nurse, said Marilena Christodoulou, head of the Stuyvesant High School Parents' Association. But the New York City Board of Education spent $1-million on an environmental cleanup of the school and says repeated air quality tests show no evidence of asbestos. So the question for parents has become, are there undetected toxins in the air? Or could teenagers who have not fully come to terms with what they saw and felt on Sept. 11 be suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder? "We're looking for the likely cause of these symptoms, including something psychological," said Kevin Ortiz, a Board of Education spokesman. He said further air testing is under way. School administrators, meanwhile, have gently suggested parents may be part of the problem. "Please do not transfer your anxiety to your kids," guidance counselor Eugene Blaufarb pleaded last Tuesday at a meeting with about 500 parents, many of whom angrily demanded answers about air quality in the school. In a way, Stuyvesant is a microcosm of the city, where life has more or less returned to normal for most people in the nearly six weeks since the terrorist attacks, recent anthrax scares in media and government offices aside. Outwardly, people seem fine. But emotionally, they are recovering at different paces. What has some Stuyvesant parents worried is peer pressure to be "cool" may prevent some of the school's 3,000 students from seeking needed mental or medical help. On a sunny afternoon last week, there was no obvious evidence of trauma among the students who streamed out of school, laughing and chatting, backpacks on their shoulders. Six blocks away, the ruins of the World Trade Center smoldered. "It all seems perfectly normal except when I look over there," said sophomore Katelyn McTague, nodding toward the empty hole in the skyline where the twin towers once soared. Like many students, McTague said she did not talk to school counselors after the disaster. "I just didn't feel like I needed it. I talked to my friends and family," she said. Eugene Franco was four days into his freshman year when the first plane hit. He was in math class. "People thought it was a small plane. They even joked about it," he said. Then, the second plane hit, and teachers ordered students to run north and regroup at 23rd Street and 11th Avenue. As they did, the first tower began to collapse. "We were running. It was very disorganized. When you looked back all you saw was smoke and debris." But Franco also did not seek counseling. "I didn't feel like it," he said, shrugging. A dump truck clattered down Chambers Street as Franco spoke. It was carrying debris to a pier near the school. At the pier, cranes load the wreckage onto barges headed for a landfill. Cleanup crews at the site are supposed to wet the debris and cover the dump trucks with tarps to keep dust to a minimum. But at the parents association meeting last week, one mother told of being enveloped in a dusty cloud from one of the trucks as she crossed a bridge that links Chambers Street to the school. The parents association voted to ask the city to move the barge to another site away from the school and residences, but there is no indication yet whether the barges will be moved. Twenty-eight Stuyvesant teachers have complained of health problems since returning to the school, said Ron Davis, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers. He said the union believes the air inside the school is safe. Part of the problem might be psychological, he said. "It's a stressful situation down there. They have to walk by the ruins every day with the smoke and the noise and the smell. The stress alone could induce headaches," Davis said. Still, school administrators notified parents in a letter Friday that an epidemiologist has been assigned to investigate the health problems. A magnet school famous for its rigorous math and science curriculum and ethnic diversity, the 97-year-old Stuyvesant "is seen as a symbol," Christodoulou said. For that reason, she said, city officials made a "political decision" to reopen it quickly. "I thought it was a little hasty," she said. "We should have had more time to review the test results." Ortiz, the board of education spokesman, denied that politics played a role. "That's not accurate. Parents pushed really hard to reopen Stuyvesant," he said. However, parents at a nearby public elementary school recently voted not to allow their children to return even though an environmental cleanup of the facility is finished. Stuyvesant students said the air seems fine in the school, but they acknowledged it was sometimes difficult to breathe as they walked through the neighborhood. "There's this smell of rotten something," freshman Adnan Farukui said. "Like cement, or burning plastic," added freshman Peter Liu. Do they think parents are overreacting about potential health hazards? "Definitely!" Liu said. "Like my dad, I couldn't call him right away (on Sept. 11) because the lines for the phones were so long," Farukui said. "And he told me he started to cry." Denise Marsalisi knows she should not hover anxiously over her son. She said she refrained from asking a doctor last week to conduct a second blood test, fearing the request would only make Nick "more worried." She doubts her son's rash is psychosomatic, but she doesn't rule it out. "Some of these kids saw people jumping out. They were leaving as the building collapsed." She said she wishes Nick would talk more about that day. But Christodoulou said, "They're teenagers. What do you expect? It's not cool to see a counselor. It's not cool to see the nurse. It's not cool to wear a dust mask." With the school already reopened, all parents can do now, she said, is encourage their children to open up emotionally -- and await the results of new air tests.
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