Professor sickened by dust, but VCU says facilities are safe

One of Virginia Commonwealth University's star professors is incurably ill from dust inhaled in university studios, but the school says its facilities are safe and warnings adequate.

The state Workers Compensation Commission last year found that professor Allan Rosenbaum's silicosis was caused by his exposure to hazardous dust at the school. The commission awarded him permanent disability benefits totaling $211,800.

VCU officials earlier had shrugged off advice from Rosenbaum's doctor, a professor in its medical college, that it warn students and staff about the risk of silicosis after Rosenbaum's diagnosis in 2005. The doctor had asked for the warning just days after making the diagnosis.

Silicosis is a lung disease that causes severe shortage of breath. Rosenbaum, a professor in the department of crafts, no longer is able to work with clay and must limit his teaching to classrooms rather than studios. No other cases have been reported to university officials.

VCU also has canceled an outside study of the crafts department that it commissioned after Rosenbaum's diagnosis.

The university says its Fine Arts Building on West Broad Street is safe, and that classroom instruction and safety information documents kept in classrooms and studios since before Rosenbaum's illness provide sufficient warning about the dangers of breathing the dust.

"This is one of those cumulative diseases, caused by cumulative exposure. People were definitely being exposed. It seems right that they should be made aware of it," Rosenbaum said. "You'd think this'd be taken seriously."

Brian J. Ohlinger, VCU's associate vice president for facilities management, said he doesn't feel VCU students or staff working around the school's ceramics facilities are at risk. He said the Fine Arts Building, which opened in 2000, has the latest ventilation equipment and dust controls.

"We do, I think, work very diligently to make sure our students and staff are not exposed to hazardous materials," he said.

. . .

The hazardous material in this case is dust particles of silica, a common mineral found in clay, sand and rock. The dust in the Fine Arts Building comes from the powder that students and staff mix with water to make clay, as well as from scraping kilns clean of bits of clay and glaze.

Inhaling silica dust, whether from clay, sand or rock, over time can cause excessive development of fibers in the lung, resulting in severe shortness of breath.

Silicosis, known as a workplace hazard for the better part of a century, is incurable. The damage is similar to that caused by asbestos fibers and coal dust.

Rosenbaum found he had advanced silicosis in 2005, after several months of coughing led him to visit a doctor and get a new chest X-ray. An earlier X-ray, which he took as a routine precaution in 1998, was clear of any sign of silicosis.

After diagnosing Rosenbaum, VCU medical college professor Paul Fairman said he wanted an evaluation of dust in the college's studios. In an e-mail circulated to several VCU officials two days after the diagnosis, he warned, "There is a federal requirement that those who are exposed to the hazard [real or suspected] should be informed."

An e-mailed reply from epidemiology professor R. Leonard Vance noted: "My chair always wanted to know about anything that could have PR implications. There is an obvious [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] issue here."

Air-quality tests conducted by VCU staff after Rosenbaum's diagnosis found dust levels were 98 percent below hazardous levels -- but VCU did the testing after removing plastic bags that blocked ventilation vents, according to internal communications and testimony to the Workers Compensation Commission.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration's permissible limits for dust depend on the percentage of the dust that is silica.

The state Department of Labor and Industry, which enforces federal occupational safety and health standards in Virginia, never has inspected the VCU building, spokesman Eric Delia said.

Ohlinger said there's no need for such inspections, because VCU has its own experts to do the work. If they had found any problem, the university would fix it without needing to inform the state agency, he said.

In a November 2005 e-mail to VCU arts school Dean Richard Toscan, Ohlinger said, "There is really no reason to test on an annual basis unless something changes."

. . .

Basil Varkey, a retired Medical College of Wisconsin professor and expert on silicosis, said the disease is less common than it once was because of tighter workplace safety oversight, particularly in mining and sandblasting.

Varkey said there is no cure and no treatment for silicosis. He said Rosenbaum is doing exactly what he must -- by not entering the clay studios and ceasing to work with clay -- to slow progression of the disease.

In the crafts department's clay-mixing room, the source of most of the silica dust is its studios. There are five intake vents directly above the mixing machines designed to take in dusty air and run it through a filter before releasing it outside the building, Ohlinger said.

But the vents didn't do that because university staff members taped plastic bags over them, apparently to keep the dust from spreading elsewhere in the building, according to sworn testimony before the compensation commission from VCU crafts professor Jack L. Wax and Stephen Robison, who teaches ceramics at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and was a visiting professor at VCU. The bags covered the vents for about five years, they testified.

Woodworking and furniture design professor William Hammersly told the commission that when students and staff dumped powder into the clay mixers, they produced dust that would travel down the hallway, and walking through the area would raise dust into the air.

Hammersly, who shared work space with Rosenbaum, said dust traveled at least 40 yards from the mixing room. It covered walls and floors and hung in the air when disturbed, he said.

Robison testified to the commission that the Fine Arts Building was much dustier than other such buildings at universities where he had studied or worked.

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University officials told Wax soon after his arrival at VCU in 2002 that the ventilation system did not meet design specifications, he said in a 2005 letter to University Provost Stephen D. Gottfredson.

The officials told him that while there might be valid reasons for concern, it would be a minimum of five years before the problem could be fixed, Wax added.

In 2002, dust from another part of the ceramics department, its kiln area, was so bad that the arts school built a wall between it and Wax's glass department, Wax testified to the commission.

That wall blocked the kiln room from large fans that had been installed to vent hot air and dust -- the kiln had to be scraped after each firing and was another major source of silica dust.

Ohlinger said he was unaware of any wall added to the building, despite the testimony of Wax and other crafts department staff.

University of Richmond sculpture professor Fiona Ross, who studied and worked at VCU from 1999 to 2005, told the commission she had to wear a respirator while working in the VCU kiln room.

She said that when cleaning crews made their daily rounds through the ceramics facilities, their sweeping created what she described as a fog of dust that would hang in the air for more than 45 minutes.

. . .

At Alfred University, the nation's top ceramics school, "gooseneck" connectors link the clay mixers to the clay-mixing room's vents and filters, said professor Andrea Gill, former chair of the department at the upstate New York school. Students are encouraged to wear respirators while mixing clay.

VCU health and safety officials do not require or encourage students to use respirators in the clay-mixing room. They say the exposure levels are well-below OSHA standards, and the ventilation system is designed for that particular use and so requiring respirators is not warranted.

At Alfred, shelves from the kilns are cleaned in a separate room, on a table that keeps the dust low. Students wear respirators while they do this work, she said. Dust from glaze, which like clay contains silica, is a concern because the glaze particles are finer than dust from clay and glaze becomes glasslike in the kiln -- both factors making it more dangerous.

Alfred students use "sweeping compound," an absorbent powder designed to trap dust, when cleaning up, while the school's cleaning crews use machines similar to Zamboni ice resurfacers to wet-clean the facilities several times a week, she said.

"Really, I've never heard of anyone else in ceramics getting silicosis," Gill said. "Maybe back in the 19th century, when people worked in factories with no ventilation at all."

Gill said Alfred gives students instruction on how to clean studios and the risks of the materials they might use, but she said teachers and artists across the country are baffled by Rosenbaum's illness, since properly handled clay is not dangerous.

. . .

Rosenbaum and his colleagues had complained, without success, that VCU cleaners should use sweeping compound, they testified at the workers' compensation commission. Ohlinger said VCU has started using wet mops and cloths to clean surfaces in the ceramics area.

At VCU, classes include instruction on the hazards of silica in clay. Those classes, along with the "material safety data sheets" are kept in work areas, provide sufficient warning, Ohlinger said.

The data sheets for silica, in the form of sand, warn that if inhaled, overexposure can cause lung damage; the data sheets for kaolin, a powder used to make clay, describe it as a nuisance dust.

"People are instructed to avoid it, but they see the dangers are relatively abstract," Rosenbaum said.

"We'd tell them about it, and then the janitors would be in there dry sweeping and raising dust," he said. "What's we're saying and what we're doing are two different things."

Ohlinger said that after Rosenbaum's diagnosis, VCU told cleaning contractors to start using wet mops and cloths to clean the Fine Arts Building.

Minutes from the craft department's January 2009 staff meeting, which disclosed that Rosenbaum's lung disease "was brought on by our facility," went on to note that "we will also get properly cleaned from now on."

The minutes report that VCU was ready to close the ceramics program but decided to bring in an industrial safety expert from Alfred University to report on VCU's ceramics, glass and wood facilities.

"Her findings will result in what will be fixed," the minutes added.

Ohlinger said VCU later decided not to bring in the outside expert, because it has its own industrial-safety program that could monitor fine-arts facilities.

The minutes noted that VCU's facilities meet federal safety standards. They provided no details.

But just a few weeks later, a textiles student was complaining that the air in the Fine Arts Building made her chest become painfully tight and her throat burn.

"I am unable to breathe and feel dizzy," she wrote to arts school Dean Richard E. Toscan. "As soon as I leave the building, I feel fine. . . . I don't know if anyone else has experienced ill effects from the building, but I really would like assurance that this building is safe."

In reply, a VCU health expert said he was unaware of other complaints and suggested the student see student health services.

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or .