The Hawai‘i State Teachers Association Union yesterday demanded Waimea Canyon Elementary School be closed until administrators can guarantee it is a “safe and healthy” environment for students and teachers.
Around 6 p.m. last night administrators agreed.
The school was closed after union director Tom Perry was called out upon hearing reports that a noxious odor from a plant was sending teachers and students home sick.
The odor was coming from adjacent land owned by Kikiaola Land Co., which is leased by Syngenta Inc., a seed research company.
The cause for the school to close was the pungent wild spider flower, officials said. Doug Tiffany, Hawai‘i manager for Syngenta, said the land near the school had been sprayed recently by pesticides or herbicides.
Syngenta’s primary crops are corn, cotton and wheat.
Tiffany refused to say which type of herbicide or pesticide was used or when or where it was sprayed because the case is under the investigation by the Department of Agriculture, he said.
Principal Glenda Miyazaki said the school is working with Syngenta to plow the weeds while school is closed. The weekend will allow the plants to decay, she said.
Miyazaki could not confirm the number of children who left the school sick Tuesday, Wednesday or yesterday.
“Those files are not available and I have no way of knowing right now how many children went home,” Miyazaki said.
“There has to be a (distinction between) how many came to the health room and how many went home. Just because they came up to health room doesn’t mean the child went home.”
The symptoms that some teachers and students felt from the odor included nausea, congestion and exhaustion, Miyazaki said earlier this week.
Miyazaki also said earlier this week that at least eight students went home with those symptoms Tuesday.
“But I haven’t kept tabs with the health room,” Miyazaki added.
At 2:45 p.m. yesterday, teachers met with Perry, many of whom told him they and their students had headaches and watery eyes and were dizzy and nauseous.
“It’s not a safe working environment for the teachers,” Perry said. “Whether this weed is toxic or not, the fact remains teachers are getting sick while working on the job and smelling this.”
Bob Boesch, pesticide program manager for the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture, said he was told by Syngenta representatives that the day of the odor complaint, there had been herbicide applications.
“Apparently there was, but they were a significant distance away from the school — a quarter mile or so away,” he said.
The DOA took samples at the school to determine whether there was a residue of those applications, he said.
But those results to determine whether the school is safe won’t be back for two weeks, Perry said. If school hadn’t been closed, children and staff could have been exposed to harm in the meantime, Perry argued.
“We want the school closed until they can plow that under and guarantee it’s a healthy working and learning environment for students and its leaders,” Perry said. “When I went out there I experienced it first-hand. You get light-headed and an inability to concentrate. It’s almost as if you’ve taken Vicodin.”
Approximately 50 acres of Syngenta’s leased land will be “turned under,” Tiffany said, which began yesterday after 2 p.m.
At press time, the school was scheduled to reopen Monday.
