25 Sigourney Street
News and information on the State of Connecticut's 20-story office tower at 25 Sigourney Street in Hartford, Connecticut - the most studied building in the world...
The State of Connecticut bought a 20-floor office building at 25 Sigourney Street, Hartford, CT and started occupying it in 1995. The building houses the Department of Revenue Services and the Department of Social Services. The building had significant water damage when the state bought it. The state did not address the water leaks and water damage for years. State workers started having health problems in the same year that state workers moved in. Over a decade later, the building's water and ventilation problems persist, and hundreds of occupants' new health problems--which range from asthma to sinusitis to bronchitis, pneumonia, sarcoidosis, hypersenstitivity pneumonitis, stroke, heart attack and other heart rhythm abnormalities--have escalated, leaving workers' immune systems seriously compromised. Deaths of workers in their forties and fifties are becoming common.
Xerox and Aetna previously occupied the building. Aetna moved out first - and fast - reportedly because of the high incidence of health problems. Xerox moved out later. Xerox workers experienced health problems too, and at least a few became so ill while working in the building that they went out on disability. Mum's the word though, among former Aetna and Xerox occupants.
Tax department workers have been more active than social service workers in getting the building's problems addressed and resolved, although workers from both groups have developed extensive health problems while working at 25 Sigourney. To date, some 245 tax department workers are reported chronic building related illnesses. You might know some. The number of social services workers with building related illnesses is uncertain.
Building occupants started calling in health experts to look at the building beginning in 1996. Connecticut OSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and a variety of industrial hygienists and environmental engineers have been called in at employees' request.
These experts have found that the building leaks, and leaks a lot, particularly around windows and balconies; the flat roof leaks; the building has mold in its interior wall cavities and ventilation system; it operates under negative pressure, meaning it pulls stuff in, including moisture and who knows what else; there's no barrier between the building's external brick and its interior wall board; the ventilation system, which was known to be at the end of its useful life in 1992 and when the state bought the building, is unreliable, deteriorated and failing.
Undeterred by any of this, the State of Connecticut moved the Department of Homeland Security employees into 25 Sigourney Street some time in 2004, when the state was making forceful assertions that the building was "remediated." Some of the health effects of mold and other indoor air quality problems include difficulty concentrating, forgetfulness, sometimes referred to as "brain fog." Feel safer now?
To boot, it was recently discovered that discover that the Department of Public Works and building management company Tunxis Management (a Tomasso company) had never ensured that the building's major printshop, copying and computer operations were exhausted outside the building, in compliance with basic ASHRAE standards.
Printing, copying and computer operations, especially when done on the large scale that state agencies do, general harmful pollutants, including VOCs and ozone. And building occupants have been breathing them in the whole time.
25 Sigourney's mold problems were apparently enough to make Aetna and Xerox workers sick, and sick enought to get the heck out. Top off the mold problems with a toxic chaser of VOCs and ozone, and its no wonder people are sick and dying.
And what's the state going to do about it? Fix the printing ventilation systems, apparently. But what about tfixing he computer ventilation systems? And what about the mold that's still accumulating?
Governor Rell , Commissioner of Administrative Services Linda Yelmini, and Commissioner of Public Works Jim Fleming don't have very good answers. And they don't have much of a plan. Despite confirmation by multiple medical experts that employees' health problems are linked to the building environment, government officials are intent on keeping the building open, and insisting on bringing sick workers back as soon as possible. Why? You be the judge. Could it be that they put politics and posturing above people and productivity?
It is an election year, after all. And owning up to the government's continued blunders doesn't make for very good PR.