School in SP is banned after gas contamination – 09/02/2023 – Daily life

The CEU (Centro Educacional Unificado) Três Pontes, in Jardim Romano, in the east zone of São Paulo, was banned after a report concluded that the land is contaminated by methane and ethylbenzene gases. Around 1,900 children study there and will be transferred to other units.

According to the City of São Paulo, no child or employee at the unit is at risk of health due to the presence of gases. He also informed that, although the first signs of the problem appeared in September last year, the report confirming the contamination was only ready on January 27th.

Parents and local employees only found out about the ban last Saturday (4), when they were summoned to a meeting. The Sedin (Union of Child Educators) says that there was slowness and inefficiency of the city hall in solving the problem and made a representation in the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The suspicion of contamination began when the unit’s employees noticed that the pillar of one of the classrooms, where the day care center operated, began to heat up. According to the city hall, at the time, Comgás was called and ruled out that there was a gas leak.

Teams from the Secretariat of Works and Civil Defense were also activated, which determined the isolation of this space in the day care center and suspended the activities of the rest of the CEU for 15 days. During this period, they would make a deeper diagnosis of the situation.

As the reason for the heating of the pillar was not identified, the city hall hired an environmental engineering company to investigate the case. In-person classes were also resumed and continued until the end of the 2022 school year.

“The engineering company released the return of activities, only the room where the heating was identified remained banned. The children were not in any danger during this period”, said Bruno Lopes Correia, deputy secretary of the Municipal Secretary of Education.

Still according to him, the detailed report on the situation was only ready at the end of January and identified that the warming was caused by the presence of methane and ethylbenzene. The evaluation indicated that the gases are confined below the building’s slab and that they did not extrapolate into the air or water, that is, they only contaminated the soil.

“Engineers said that inhaling this gas is unlikely. It is harmful to the environment, so we need to take care of the situation. But we guarantee that, at no time, were the lives or health of children and teachers at risk,” he said. Belt.

With the interdiction of the building, the approximately 1,900 students from the kindergarten to the 9th grade of elementary school will be relocated to other units in the region. The city hall informed that those who end up enrolled in a school more than 1.5 kilometers from where they live will be entitled to free school transport.

According to Correia, the forecast is that students can return to CEU Três Pontes in the second semester.

The city hall is developing a pilot project to study how to extract the gases from the site. This first step should be completed in 25 days and then work will begin.