By: Olivia Gschwind
RALEIGH, N.C. — Four law practices jointly pursuing a civil lawsuit against North Carolina State University and Monsanto say the university’s lack of transparency has failed to deliver answers to people who worked and studied in Poe Hall, a building suspected of being linked to hundreds of cancer cases and other illnesses.
“There’s always more to the story than what is being is let on, and so that’s why it’s so important that more documents come to light,” attorney Pat Wallace, a partner at Milberg, said.
The firms said they are representing hundreds of clients who believe they developed cancer or another illness from exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Poe Hall.
In a recent interview, attorneys from the four practices — Milberg, Whitley Law Firm, Edwards Kirby Attorneys at Law and The Law Offices of F. Bryan Brice, Jr. — said they decided to join forces to pool their resources.
“Not only are we pursuing claims against a major institution backed by the state of North Carolina, we’re also pursuing claims against a multi-billion dollar corporation,” attorney Ben Whitley said.
PCBs were commonly used and manufactured in the U.S. from 1929 until 1979 when they were banned by the Toxic Substances Control Act. Monsanto, an agrochemical company acquired by Bayer in 2018, manufactured the building materials used to construct Poe Hall in 1971.
N.C. State closed Poe Hall after university leaders became aware of a safety complaint filed with the State Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Division, as well as “concerns that employees may have been exposed to other hazardous substances due to the building’s age and ongoing renovation projects,” according to a timeline put together by the university.
Following reports of the complaint, tests conducted by N.C. State’s Environmental Health and Safety Division (EHS) in October 2023 found “detectable levels” of commercial PCB compound Aroclor-1262 in samples taken from Poe Hall, according to the university. The university contacted the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services for further guidance and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to request a Health Hazard Evaluation.
The building was closed Nov. 17, 2023, after the university’s leaders “promptly decided to proactively close the building to better understand what potential issues exist,” according to N.C. State’s Poe Hall Updates website.
The law firms pursuing the case are still in the preliminary stages of research. Legal action could begin as early as next year.
Brice and Wallace also said they have begun investigating other buildings on N.C. State’s campus and plan to extend their investigation to buildings across the UNC system.
‘There’s obviously something amiss’
University records from caulk testing in 2018 reveal that manufactured PCB compounds Aroclor-1254 and Aroclor-1268 were present in high concentrations in exterior panels and windows of Poe Hall that ranged from 2,700-6,000 ppm and 12,000-17,000 ppm, respectively. The EPA recommends the removal of PCBs found in building materials greater than or equal to 50 ppm.
Records also show that high concentrations of PCBs were found in sections of the exterior caulking of D.H. Hill Library in 2018 and Dabney Hall in 2023. Some sections of exterior caulk on Dabney Hall exceeded EPA recommendations by 40 to 460 times, while areas of D.H. Hill Library were 76 to 440 times higher than EPA-designated safe levels.
During a webinar held March 25, 2024, Chancellor Randy Woodson said N.C. State maintenance or renovation personnel may choose to test building materials suspected to contain PCBs before maintenance or renovation, even though EPA guidelines do not require building testing before construction.
“If there are maintenance needs or if individuals express concerns, our facilities and environmental health and safety team will evaluate these as they have always done in the past,” Woodson said.
When contacted for an interview, Woodson referred requests for comment to N.C. State EHS, which director Mary Beth Koza responded to in a written statement.
“Testing buildings for hazardous substances may be routinely conducted when building renovation projects are undertaken, depending on the building’s age and material being disturbed as part of the project,” Koza said. “The regulatory requirements regarding hazardous substance assessment, mitigation and remediation guide our response.”
According to a PCBs Q&A document published by the EPA in 2015, caulk containing high levels of PCBs can release those chemicals into the air through a process called off-gassing. Additionally, PCBs can leach into surrounding materials like wood, concrete, and other types of masonry.
Attorney Bryan Brice said his law firm learned about the magnitude of the Poe Hall situation after receiving a large volume of calls beginning in December 2023 from people who had formerly studied in Poe Hall and had been or were currently diagnosed with cancer and other neurological issues.
He said the university’s decision not to contact past students or faculty of Poe Hall has contributed to a lack of transparency.
“It was disappointing, to say the least, to us, to see N.C. State higher-ups go to the General Assembly and ask for $180 million to fix the building but not a penny to help the people who are sick,” Brice said.
In the March webinar, Provost Warwick Arden said the university is following NIOSH’s lead with the Health Hazard Evaluation in terms of outreach and gathering information.
One of Brice’s earlier clients, Darren Masier, received a doctorate in education from N.C. State in 2013 and was later diagnosed with cancer. His case was appealed to the State Supreme Court, which ruled to allow independent testing inside Poe Hall in June 2024.
Wallace said test results from the firms’ experts will provide an unbiased picture of the Poe Hall environment, independent of Monsanto’s or the university’s interests.
The only testing allowed in Poe Hall before the state’s ruling was commissioned by the university and performed by the consulting and engineering firm Geosyntec in February 2024.
Wallace said the Geosyntec report was a “nothing-to-see-here” type of report.
“While they’re saying nothing to see here, there’s no problems, they’ve also permanently closed Poe Hall and talk about spending hundreds of millions of dollars to remediate it,” Wallace said. “So there’s obviously something amiss with those two stories.”
‘We’ve been called liars’
Sandy Alford studied inside Poe Hall from the fall of 1989 until the spring of 1992, when she received her master’s in education. She spent an additional two semesters pursuing a doctorate in 1996 in the same building before discontinuing her studies.
Around Thanksgiving 2021, Alford was diagnosed with stage II metastatic breast cancer.
Dressed in pink with a breast cancer awareness pin on her lapel, Alford regularly comes to the building to put up breast cancer stickers and caution students who sit at the chairs and tables next to the building, telling them not to risk their health.
She said she wonders if university administrators would have taken different steps if Poe Hall was not a building of predominantly female educators.
“If this was an engineering school, if this was an MBA school, if this was a male-dominated building, would it be different?” Alford said.
Women in Alford’s program would frequently need to bring their children to class, she said, her voice breaking.
“It was just a bunch of women trying to help a bunch of other women get through this as best they could,” she said. “If that meant bringing their kid to class, we didn’t care.”
She recounted one woman who had to bring her baby to the final exam and breastfeed in the building.
“Now, looking back on that decision, it breaks my heart, because the university isn’t tracking us,” Alford said. “So, I know they’re not tracking those children.”
Since learning about the presence of PCBs in Poe Hall, Alford has been working to connect others with information about the impact of PCBs on the body and spread the word to other Poe Hall alumni who have been diagnosed with cancer or other illnesses.
When Alford had genetic testing done to determine if her breast cancer was hereditary, it came back negative.
Back in February, Alford went on WRAL with a panel of seven other women who were diagnosed with different types of cancers, including breast cancer, and all attended Poe Hall.
“We all had DNA testing done,” Alford said. “Everybody’s DNA testing came back negative.”
The EPA has classified PCBs as “probable” human carcinogens following a reassessment of a 1987 study. The agency’s review of all relevant animal studies found clear evidence that PCBs cause cancer in animals and have toxic effects on the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems.
The National Toxicology Program has said it is reasonable to conclude that PCBs are carcinogenic in humans and NIOSH has concluded that PCBs are a potential occupational carcinogen.
The alumni of Poe Hall don’t have a leg to stand on, Alford said, because they don’t have the same protections as staff and faculty under OSHA regulations.
“We’ve been called drama queens,” Alford said. “We’ve been called liars. We’ve been told that we’re just standing around waiting for a paycheck.”
‘I should be safe going to class’
The NCSU Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) delivered a petition Nov. 19 to Holladay Hall, the location of the chancellor’s office.
Ava Dandurand, an undergraduate student involved with CCAEJ, said they taped the 34-page document to the door while holding up signs and chanting outside the building.
Dandurand said students deserve to know if they’re going into a building that has PCBs in it.
“It’s disheartening because my parents send me off to school thinking I’m going to be safe,” Dandurand said. “I should be safe going to class, I should be safe in my dorm.”
Most students know about Poe Hall, she said, but few realize PCBs have been found on other campus buildings. Dandurand often has classes in Dabney Hall and said she chooses to avoid the building as much as possible or wear a mask.
“Their no. 1 priority should be human health,” she said. “Why they care more about buildings and money over us and our health, I will never understand that.”
Chelsea Lundquist-Wentz is a graduate student and instructor at N.C. State who helped to organize the NCSU chapter of CCAEJ.
The organization’s demands to the university, she said, are to contact all former employees and students who were exposed to Poe Hall’s environment, compensate those people for health screenings, and investigate the presence of PCBs in other buildings on the university’s campus.
Lundquist-Wentz said a lack of transparency and action have also been main concerns for the group.
“Complaints that were filed within the university, they’ve essentially never responded to them,” Lunqiust-Wentz said.
“If we have reason to believe a building is unsafe or in need of repair, we will take action to protect the safety of our community,” Koza said in the statement. “Every concern submitted to the university is triaged and responded to by a team of campus partners as appropriate in the circumstances.”
‘The answers are often hard’
The CDC defines a cancer cluster as a greater-than-expected number of related cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a defined period of time.
In the March webinar, Arden said no federal or state agency investigations have found evidence that there is a cancer cluster related to Poe Hall.
Andrew Olshan, a UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health professor in cancer epidemiology, said it’s difficult to replicate the methodology of “gold standard” epidemiology studies that can control for various factors and clearly show causation.
“You will see cancers of different types that can occur,” Olshan said. “The challenge is trying to tease out, is there a particular risk factor in the environment, in the building, or wherever, that is specifically associated with specific cancer or cancer types?”
Olshan said the same type of cancer can have multiple etiologic pathways, making it hard to determine the cause. Oral cancer can be caused by smoking, for example, but also human papillomavirus, he said.
In a 2012 study by Emory University epidemiologist Michael Goodman and his colleagues, 428 cancer cluster investigations in 38 different states were examined over 20 years. The most commonly reported cancer types observed in the study were leukemia, breast and brain cancers, however, only one investigation identified a cause of those cancers with certainty.
As the Goodman study shows, Olshan said, finding clear causation in occupational settings is difficult because of the varying levels to which different individuals have different exposure levels to a toxin in the environment.
“These are legitimate concerns,” Olshan said. “Are there adverse health outcomes to being in that community or working in that building? And they deserve an answer. It’s just that the answers are often hard.”
