Jillian Dickens
Northern News Services

Pangnirtung (Jan 23/06) - When Paulette Metuq went back to school after Christmas break, she wasn't expecting another break from class one week later.

But on Jan. 11 the school was shut down, and remains closed after students and staff were developing rashes.

The Attagoyuk school investigation in Pangnirtung unveiled some pretty gross items - including this fused glob of gook lodged inside a classroom sink drain. - photo courtesy of Adam Gordon

"I would start getting rashes on my face and some of my friends started getting rashes on their legs and they got all swollen," said the Grade 10 student of Attagoyuk school in Pangnirtung.

Metuq and her friends were not alone - as many as 24 students and 15 staff of Attagoyuk were experiencing allergic reactions and having trouble breathing, said Lorne Levy, manager of capital planning for the department of Education based in Iqaluit.

A team from the department of community and government services first arrived at the school on Friday, Jan. 6, a couple of days after Metuq first noticed her rash and "when everybody started reacting."

Before the two-week Christmas break, the air-circulation unit and humidifier in the school had been shut off and several classrooms were locked up.

The team of inspectors found that dust particles caked on the radiators in these sealed classrooms coupled with the extremely dry air caused the allergic reactions and gave off an odour Metuq described as, "like old house smell, like old wood."

They localized the problem to a few classrooms and in one classroom they found four or five paintbrushes jammed deep down inside one sink's drain.

"It was pretty gross," said Levy. "The brushes looked like ill-defined goop and it had a smell - like an organic, decomposed smell."

They also discovered the p-traps - u-shaped pipes in the sewage system designed to trap gases and smells from entering back into the building - were not working.

That's because when the sewage system was pumped out during the holidays, the fluid that sits in the p-traps and allows them to trap gases and odours, was sucked out, said Levy.

Nobody was using the sinks and toilets in the building during the break, so water was never poured down the drain and into the p-traps, he said.

"Because the p-traps were drained dry it just smelled like sewage," said Levy.

After dealing with the lodged paintbrushes and dry p-traps, the team did a thorough clean up, Levy said.

"We even cleaned the hall passes. The big wooden passes had no finish to them so they had a soapy urine smell to them. We tidied those up, too," said Levy. "We almost did too good a job because the school ended up having a Mr. Clean smell to it."

Thinking the problem was solved, the school was reopened Monday, Jan. 9, but students and staff were still having reactions. On Jan. 11 the school was again shut down and someone from Nunatta Environmental Assessment joined CGS to inspect the school.

This inspector was the same person who assessed the school in Qikiqtarjuaq that was closed down for two weeks in November when batted fibreglass particles were found lodged in the air system.

"We know it's not the same problem in Attagoyuk school," said Levy.

The inspection team sampled the air and checked the entire school for mildew, but found nothing.

"We are quite certain that the dust on the radiators and dry air is the problem," said Levy on Wednesday, Jan. 19.

CGS hopes to reopen the school soon.

In the meantime, Metuq says she's been keeping busy "babysitting and working." She hasn't been doing any schoolwork though, but says it will be all right.

"I think we're just going to continue doing what we were doing when we left off," she said.