GREENSBORO, N.C. — Students at North Carolina A&T University started their fourth week of school this week and some are dealing with health issues they say are related to mold.
WFMY News 2's Amber Lake visited NC A&T's campus to get some answers.
When you are in college the last thing you want to worry about is mold in your dorm room. Some students and parents are finding that it is in fact an issue in some buildings and they are not happy.
"It worries me for others who have bad sicknesses," Freshman Logan Lewis said. "I heard that others got sick the first week of school because of the mold."
"Coughing, nasal congestion...they are both asthmatic," parent Kira Schley said.
Schley sent her daughter who has asthma off to college almost a month ago.
"I've always dealt with her as well I'm a single parent so it's always been me taking care of her making sure she's taking care of her asthma so luckily she knows what to do but I think she's just getting sad and frustrated that she can't get this cold to break," she said.
Schley said both her daughter and her daughter's roommate's asthma has progressively gotten worse since the first day of school.
She said multiple people have reached out to the school about mold in a number of residence halls, but say nothing has changed.
"That's beyond frustrating with the amount of money that I'm trying to come up with to pay for tuition," she said.
Lewis said many people living in his residence hall are seeing mold.
"I don't want the kids and the teachers thinking my daughter has COVID-19 when I know this is all mold and asthma-related so she's like 'mom it's so embarrassing I have to leave class because I have to cough and I can't stop coughing," Schley said.
John Lowney, executive director of Housing & Residence Life at NC A&T said every mold or mildew report is handled quickly and extra steps were taken this summer to help in the prevention process.
“This summer one of the things that we did as we hired contractors that came in and cleaned all of our HVAC units to be free of any kind of organic growth,” Lowney said.
NC A&T said they encourage students to report any mold or mildew they find.
“In this profession, there are always residence halls that require remediation not just here at NC A&T but nationwide and we stay on top of making sure that we do routine maintenance on our vintage buildings,“ Lowney said.