Mystery itch causes jitters at Makalapa Elementary
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Nine-year-old Daliana Colon thought she was being bitten by mosquitoes as she stood on the grounds of Makalapa Elementary School talking to friends before the morning bell yesterday.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
When she got inside her fourth-grade classroom and the itching didn't go away, she went to the school's health room and reported the problem.
Concerned parents lined the fence fronting Makalapa Elementary School awaiting word on their children after 17 students and one adult on the campus complained of skin irritation, watery eyes and scratchy throats.
She wasn't alone.
Authorities are still unsure what caused at least 17 school children, mostly third and fourth graders, and one adult to suffer skin irritation, watery eyes and scratchy throats yesterday as school began.
None of the children were seriously injured.
"More and more people kept coming in and coming in," Daliana said as she left Tripler Army Medical Center, dressed in layers of borrowed scrub gowns and hospital footies.
Daliana and the other children were undressed and scrubbed down by paramedics at the Salt Lake school. They were wrapped in trash bags and taken by ambulance to local emergency rooms, where new teams of decontamination specialists, dressed in hazardous materials moon suits, met them and scrubbed them down again. "It was scary," the girl said.
Most of them were standing outside Building D in the center of the campus when they first noticed the itching.
The symptoms, said Fire Capt. Richard Soo, were similar to those experienced by people exposed to pepper spray or mace, and also very similar to those suffered by students next door at Radford High School in March, when the school was closed after students eating breakfast in the school cafeteria reported itching and burning.
Tests conducted by the department's hazardous materials team showed no chemicals were present at Makalapa shortly after the students first noticed the itch. If airborne chemicals had been present, they had dissipated, Soo said.
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| A student leaves the health room at Makalapa Elementary School to enter a waiting ambulance after being scrubbed down at the school. Seventeen students complaining of skin and eye irritation were decontaminated in the shower and taken to area hospitals.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser |
Six children and one adult were treated and released from Tripler. Eleven children were treated and released from Kapi'olani Medical Center at Pali Momi.
Health Department officials will follow up on the incident next week, said Janice Okubo, a health department spokesperson.
Leslie Au, a health department toxicologist, said he was not yet convinced that children had been exposed to a chemical.
Au investigated another case of itchy students at Radford two years ago and found evidence that microscopic mites, either bird mites or red spider mites, had fallen from the trees onto the exposed skin of the students.
Itching is the first symptom a person suffering from mites notices, Au said. Airborne chemicals usually cause eye problems before skin irritation is noticed.
Principal Raymond K. Fujii said that when the first children came to the health room complaining of itching, school officials had no reason to think that something serious had occurred.
It was not until nearly an hour later, when so many children arrived to complain, that school officials realized the extent of the problem and called 911.
Police, fire department paramedics and hazardous materials teams and several ambulances arrived at the school and sealed off the campus to those not already inside.
Parents whose children had reported to the health room were called and told to meet their children at local hospital emergency rooms. Parents who learned of the incident when they were driving past the school or who came to the school after hearing news accounts were kept outside until the emergency workers had gone.
"Please check on my grandchild," Lydia Tabilas called out to one of the firefighters who passed her.
When the school was reopened at about 11:30 a.m., a few parents retrieved their children from the classrooms and took them home. The school remained opened.
