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GREENSBORO — Tears streamed down Kathleen O’Connell’s face the first time she stepped into the Guilford County Courthouse in 1992.

She was wearing contacts that day, and something in the air caused her eyes to itch and swell.

“I thought I was going to scratch my eyes out,” she said.

So started a series of respiratory problems she has developed through the years, all of which she believes are caused by a building incubating mold and a host of environmental allergens.

Her symptoms plagued her regularly when she began working in the public defender’s office in 1998 and got worse when she became an assistant district attorney in 2001.

And O’Connell is far from alone. Other courthouse workers say they too have experienced a variety of respiratory and allergy problems. The reports come from every floor of the downtown building, from office warrens to more open areas where leak-stained ceiling tiles are evident.

Most workers say they feel fine when they’re away from the courthouse. It’s when they return that the sneezing, wheezing and coughing resume.

Certain types of mold, in sufficient quantities, are commonly believed to cause a number of illnesses inside buildings.

Guilford County has spent thousands of dollars trying to find and fix problems through the years, including paying for two environmental studies. Testing has shown mold in air-handling units, roof and structural leaks, and temperature discrepancies.

But county officials say the tests show nothing that links the building to illnesses.

“There doesn’t appear to be any environmental evidence that there would be any adverse health effects on employees,” said Steve Ramsey, a public health preparedness coordinator for the county.

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The Guilford County Courthouse makes up one-third of the downtown governmental complex. It anchors a U-shaped plaza and is flanked by Greensboro’s city hall and the courthouse it replaced in 1973.

Problems began at the six-story courthouse almost from its opening 36 years ago. Within the first year, a county grand jury called for $9 million in replacements to correct “inadequate, uncomfortable and dangerous” jury boxes. Court employees asked for carpets to line the center of courtrooms to quiet thundering footsteps, and workers reported troubles regulating temperatures in certain rooms.

In 1980, the county paid a contractor $25,000 to rip up steps outside the building’s plaza level because the colors of the steps blended together in a visual illusion that created nasty falls for some courthouse patrons.

And there were leaks. Rain from the municipal plaza would drain toward the building, seep into its interior walls and leak into the Clerk of Superior Court’s criminal records vault on one of the basement levels dubbed UG, or Upper Ground.

County facilities director Fred Jones, who has been with the county since 1978, has spent years working on the problem.

“We’ve had problems with the UG level for years with water leaking,” Jones said. “We’ve had companies come in and inject liquids under the concrete, and that stopped it for a while.”

More recently, drains were set up and sidewalks rerouted so water would run away from the building.

David Lipton, an Industrial Hygiene Consultant for the N.C. Division of Public Health, analyzed the area in 2007.

“Mold can be hidden, and that’s not good,” he said. “I’m sure over the years things got wet, were dried out, and each time if (the area) hadn’t been cleaned properly or they didn’t get rid of the reservoirs for mold growth, (problems) would have gotten worse.

“Even if you kill the mold, allergens are still in the environment.”

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Few words are as polarizing in the workplace as “sick-building syndrome,” a condition in which poor indoor air quality can lead to respiratory troubles.

People who feel ill at work but better at home or outdoors blame poor air quality and fear that invisible toxins are floating around.

Building managers and owners, often confronted with inconclusive air quality test results, are frustrated at what they perceive to be phantom troubles or oversensitive workers.

But the syndrome is real. A 1984 World Health Organization report found that at least 30 percent of new or remodeled buildings globally could have some degree of the problem.

The courthouse is not the only trouble spot for Guilford officials. Guilford County Schools closed Oak Ridge Elementary this summer because of ongoing complaints about health problems from teachers, students and parents.

The school remains closed while workers try to determine the nature of the problems and correct it. The district already has spent more than $600,000 to fix air quality concerns since the school was remodeled in 2005.

At the Guilford courthouse, dozens of workers interviewed talked about symptoms that flare up when they come into the building and get worse throughout the day.

“I come in the morning and within 30 minutes I have a headache,” said Windy Flack, a victim/witness coordinator in the district attorney’s office.

“My head hurts, my eyes are scratchy, I lose my voice. I’ve never had asthma, but I am allergic to mold. I come in and I get very tired, but when I go home, I am fine.”

On the second floor, district court judges, among others, say they have health issues, too.

“I have always been an allergy sufferer, and I do notice the building exacerbates that problem,” said District Court Judge Tom Jarrell. “I don’t get it in the High Point courthouse, but I do have it here.”

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Though many employees can trace their health issues for several years, the problem increased in 2005 when a complaint was made to the Occupational Health & Safety Administration in Raleigh.

The complaint came from John Sellers, an investigator in the district attorney’s office. He was coughing up blood in his fourth-floor office.

For the previous three weeks , he had been out sick with respiratory problems. The onset of the illness coincided with the appearance of a water-soaked ceiling tile above his office door.

Across the hall, maintenance workers covered a room with plastic sheets and used a bucket to collect water that leaked into the room when it rained.

“I came down with chronic bronchitis and had a bout with asthma,” Sellers said in his office in July.

“I was OK when I went home. I’m an outdoors man. I can go out and mow my yard, and I have no problems. But when I’m in here, I get sinus headaches.”

Employees also spoke of black, dustlike particles falling from ceiling vents. County officials said that was a concoction of dust and dead skin and was not a health hazard.

The county paid $5,000 to the Workplace Group, an industrial hygiene company, to conduct air quality tests. The results showed low to moderate levels of mold on ceiling vents on the second and fourth floors.

The company made 12 suggestions to improve housekeeping at the courthouse, such as increased dusting and vacuuming. The company also said the county should repair the heating, ventilation and air conditioning units.

Jones said the county acted on the suggestions.

Air quality issues resurfaced in July 2007 when an employee in the clerk of court’s office complained to state health officials.

That led to the N.C. Division of Public Health inspection, which Lipton conducted.

He and another state officials toured the building but did not have access to the heating and air conditioning units.

“From our visual observation, we thought there were some pretty big issues there,” Lipton said.

He also made a list of recommendations that hit on housekeeping measures and moisture control. He also recommended better communication between county officials and court employees about repair work.

The report was forwarded to the county. Lipton said his office received no response and didn’t follow up.

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For much of this summer, O’Connell moved out of her back hallway office on the fourth floor of the courthouse, often working in a small meeting room instead.

“I got to the point where I would swell up,” she said. “My eyes would swell up. My nose. My face. My throat. I couldn’t breathe. I was having asthma attacks. My throat would close off, and I would have to leave.”

She takes dozens of medications so she can go to work, and her doctor suggested she wear a surgical mask inside the building.

Originally, she chalked up the symptoms to bad allergy and sinus problems. Like many other employees, she thought she was the only one.

In March 2008, courthouse renovations drove O’Connell to her breaking point. Dust was getting kicked up around the building and made her symptoms unbearable. She called state health officials, seeking an extensive study of the building, but she said they stopped returning her calls.

Frustrated, this May she began taking tape samples of dustlike particles, water from roof leaks and stained ceiling tiles to an environmental lab for testing .

She also surveyed colleagues about their health troubles. They complained about itchy eyes and skin, chronic respiratory problems, fatigue, bug bites and more.

“There are any number of people who began experiencing symptoms as soon as they started working here,” O’Connell said.

Her first sample came from a research room in the fourth-floor library. The room’s ceiling was covered with plastic sheets. Water from a roof leak drained into a bucket.

The leak started in the summer of 2008 when the county replaced chilling units on the roof. Repairs were made in July, and the county reports the leak has been fixed.

O’Connell took her samples to Meritech, an environmental laboratory in Reidsville, for testing.

“When they first called me with my nasty-looking sample, they said it was crawling with actinomycetes, which are very dangerous pathogens,” O’Connell said.

The pathogens are a type of bacteria commonly found in soils that have been linked to actinomycosis, a chronic infection that causes pus-filled lesions on the skin. The pathogens died before lab workers were able to get an accurate count.

Samples that O’Connell collected above her office and others in the district attorney’s office tested positive for lead. County officials tested the area as well but said lead levels were within acceptable limits.

Other samples O’Connell took tested positive for fecal coliform, a sign of possible plumbing contamination. Other samples found fungal colony-forming units.

“We collected some samples of the dust that was basically coming out of those vents (in offices), and the dust turned out to be heavily infected with various types of fungi spores that shows air being blown into the building has high levels of mold,” said Kris Pawlak, a lab manager at Meritech.

In June, the News & Record took tape and swab samples from air vents and ceiling tiles and dustlike particles on desks from multiple locations on each floor of the courthouse to Envirotech, an environmental lab in Kernersville, for testing. The tests found high counts of cladosporium, a common indoor mold, and trace amounts of other allergens.

But test results often can be misleading, said Lipton of the state health department.

“People start wondering what the test results mean,” he said. “Interpretation of the results is difficult. (People) want to link mold in the environment to their health issues, and that’s a problem because we don’t have a benchmark for what is safe and unsafe.”

Instead, he said, an in-depth analysis of the building would be more practical. That would include symptom surveys of employees by epidemiologists as well as analysis of the water leaks, heating and air units, air movement, plumbing and housekeeping.

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Upon learning of O’Connell’s efforts, facilities director Jones called the Workplace Group to conduct a second round of air tests for the county.

The tests showed mold growing inside the building’s 11 air-handling units. The county is paying to have ultraviolet lighting installed in the units to destroy the fungi.

Despite the find, Jones said, the county health department reviewed the results but found no concerns for employee health.

“They said it was routine allergy stuff,” Jones said. “They saw nothing (in the test report) that would affect employee health.”

A county health official confirmed that assessment.

The county also started a cleaning campaign, replacing dozens of water-stained tiles caused by leaking condensation from water lines. Jones said the lines are being fixed as well.

The fourth-floor roof leak in the law library also has been repaired, he said, and the county has allotted about $15,000 for patching roof leaks. Jones said the building needs a new roof — a cost of about $500,000 — but the project has not made the budget in recent years.

When asked about the employee problems throughout the building, Jones said his office has not received any complaints.

“Nobody had contacted us at all,” Jones said. “I wanted to make sure the employees were protected (by having tests done). I wouldn’t want to ignore it and something be wrong.”

O’Connell said she’s glad the county is taking notice but said she will keep monitoring the situation.

“I want to be able to come to work and breathe and not have my throat close up and have an asthma attack,” said O’Connell, who still has symptoms.

“I was desperate for somebody to do something because I love my job, but I couldn’t do my job.”

Contact Ryan Seals at 373-7077 or ryan.seals@news-record.com