"With its clean lines, sturdy brick construction and shiny-new appearance, the four-year-old elementary school doesn’t look like the setting for a mystery of epic proportions.

But Oak Ridge Elementary School poses a so-far unsolvable riddle for experts from across the Triad and, more recently, well beyond.

What caused headaches, coughing fits, red eyes, blurry vision, chronic fatigue, weird rashes and other allergy-like symptoms in a significant number of the school’s students and teachers?

Could it be a “toxic” mold that one activist says is present in potentially lethal quantities? Or is it something much more mundane, such as a faulty system for air distribution that might be fixed with some basic modifications?

Whatever the answer, the enigma now has attracted federal investigators and sparked the school’s temporary closure...."

J. Brian Ewing and Taft Wireback report for the Greensboro News-Record August 2, 2009. [2]