University officials say they will monitor the Visual Arts Building after students and professors’ complaints about its ventilation.
The Rider spoke with Richard Costello, director of Environmental, Safety & Risk Management, regarding the building’s ventilation, and he said monitoring has taken place.
“We’ve done monitoring. All the chemicals associated with the art galleries, or the rooms where they do the painting, there’s been a formal assessment to determine the air quality, to determine the levels of solvents, and those are all below the concentrations that are deemed acceptable by a whole variety of agencies,” Costello said.
In an article published April 16 in The Rider (“Creativity interrupted”), students and professors complained about the building’s ventilation and sanitation.
Concerning safety measures students can take, Costello said on his end it’s about maintaining engineering controls and monitoring of ventilation.
“There’s different mechanisms,” he said. “One is engineering controls, and right now, one basically consists of ventilation, and the ventilation that is currently down there in that building, in that area, was designed by a professional engineer to address those contaminants that are being generated.
“So right now, we’re working with Facilities to evaluate that ventilation to see if we can somehow upgrade it, and that would address any of those contaminate levels. But if those can’t be addressed to what we call engineering control, then there has to be an administrative, which means you basically don’t go, you don’t spend any time there.”
Costello said no one had complained previously about the reported problems, but perhaps there could be something wrong in the system.
“We’ve haven’t had any complaints in the past, so maybe something is wrong with the ventilation system,” he said. “The ventilation system is very sensitive sometimes.”
However, due to the building’s off-campus location, Costello’s team is at a disadvantage when it comes to constant monitoring.
He also noted that despite the disadvantage, there was a general consensus to have the Visual Arts program placed off campus eight or so years ago.
Prior to its current location, it was located on the Edinburg campus but lacked proper ventilation.
The area where the old Visual Arts Building was located is now the Performing Arts Complex, which opened in 2015.
In response to the April 16 article, Costello said more monitoring will be done to secure the safety of students.
“We’re going to go do some monitoring to ensure, and we’re going to work with physical plant to ensure that there’s no contaminate levels that are in the break room, that are being generated from those other offices,” he said.
Costello said he wanted to assure students and staff that the matter is being taken seriously and will be addressed.
