Wythe County working to resolve above average radon levels in school rooms

Wythe County Public Schools is working to fix a problem that caused six rooms in two schools to have high levels of radon.

This is a gas known for causing lung cancer.

Over summer break in 2016, the school voluntarily tested their buildings. The state doesn't require them to do it regularly.

In order to find out what rooms could have problems, they closed all the doors and windows for two days before testing, which is something you wouldn't see on a normal school day.

Of the more than 300 tests done, four rooms at Spiller Elementary and two at Speedwell Elementary School had above average radon levels.

After retesting rooms during winter vacation, one room was cleared, but an unused classroom, a gym, and three classrooms had more than four Picocuries per liter, the average level experts approve of.

Superintendent Jeff Perry immediately asked state and federal experts if students needed to be removed from the classrooms.

"Both of those individuals said absolutely not, that there is no evidence that the levels that we have are significant enough to worry about that at all," Perry recalled.

It turns out, the experts told him, the levels were still so low, students would never spend enough time there to get sick.

Perry explained, "It would take you 70 years at 18 hours per day locked up in that room to produce a 1 percent chance of getting lung cancer associated with radon."

But Perry still had teachers take precautions.

"They can leave their door open, they can leave their windows open," he said. "That will help circulate the air and then any radon that has come up will be able to mitigate."

A mitigation firm was brought in to find out what caused the high levels and how to bring them back down.

Perry explained, "One of the fans was not operating properly, one of the fans seemed to have stopped. So we're going to replace those fans, maybe upgrade the size of those to go ahead and pull more air."

That firm will be at Spiller on Saturday working, and the radon levels should be down to the right level in a few hours.

As for Speedwell Elementary, they didn't have any system because they tested negative for radon in the 1990s when the state mandated the schools be checked.

So the firm will have to go underground, lay a pipe, and create that system. All of which, Perry said, is being done as quickly as possible.