Washington Township School District holds meeting on mercury vapor in rubberized gym mats

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (FOX 29) - Parents are nervous that their kids are being exposed to mercury. Now, leaders in the Washington Township School District are taking action.

"I'm concerned about the fact that it might be going on while the kids are in school," said Connie Baker. She's outraged over the handling of mercury vapor in several schools in the Washington Township School District, so is her daughter who has children at one of the elementary schools affected.

"She's not alarmed about her children, two of them at Wedgewood School, being in the gym. She has a problem if they were there when the abatement would be going on," said Connie.

On Wednesday, Connie and other parents spoke during a special school board meeting about the mercury vapor associated with rubberized gym floors.

On Tuesday, the superintendent sent out a letter that reads in part, "Due to the prospect of fair weather now that spring has arrived, with an abundance of caution, all gym classes at our six elementary schools, Bunker Hill Middle School and Washington Township High School will be relocated both in and out of the building to continue to provide health and physical education instruction and dance instruction."

"I was happy that they did close the gyms," said Colette Staab runs a Facebook page for parents called PIE which stands for Participation in Education. She says many of them feel deceived.

"It should have been handled back in 2017 when we first realized that the mercury was in the floors. The air quality testing should have been done immediately but it wasn't but our kids were exposed to an unknown amount of mercury," said Staab.

The superintendent says they took action in the summer of 2017 and ordered air samples.

"We operated under the premise based on those air quality samples that we were good and that's what we did. We proceeded ok we're good. Nobody really even knew what mercury vapor was. I think in our minds we were treating it a lot like asbestos where if you don't break it up your good. So a lot of this is new technology. New information," said Superintendent Joseph Bollendorf.

He says the test results presented by an engineer show that the gyms tested well below state guidelines and continued use wouldn't have any short or long term health risks. Still, to put the community at ease there will be no activities in the gyms for the rest of the school year.

The board also voted to use $3.1 million to replace the nine gym floors. another update meeting will take place on April 15th.