I looked forward to my freshman year of college for as long as I could remember, but little did I know I would spend my whole year sick.
I had spent most of my junior and senior years of high school socially isolated due to COVID-19, so you can imagine how excited I was to live in a new state surrounded by new people. Suddenly, everything changed when I began getting sick on and off for the whole year. I lived in a shoebox of a room with 2 other girls, yet I was the only one getting sick. It didn’t make sense. I was testing negative for COVID, so I thought maybe it was because I was in a new environment until I heard that one of the freshmen dorms possibly had mold in it.
After hearing about the suspected mold in one of the dorms, I decided to check my own room. Although I did not see any visible mold, I did find an air vent with the worst dust accumulation I have ever seen in my life. My lofted bed was directly next to the air vent, but prior to hearing about the suspected mold in other dorms, I had never thought that my own illness could be connected to this vent.
I was only 18 years old and living alone for the first time in my life, so I had no clue what to do. By the time I discovered the state my air vent was in, I felt like it was too late to do anything and I did not think I could do something because I thought this must happen all the time. I have since learned that short-term and long-term exposure to indoor air pollutants can cause health conditions like respiratory diseases, heart disease, cognitive deficits, and cancer.
I propose that college campuses are responsible for the indoor air quality experienced by residential students. This is not a novel idea as landlords in Connecticut are expected to maintain safe and habitable premises under statutes such as “implied warranty of habitability”.
Exposing students to mold or other indoor air pollutants may even be considered a housing code violation. In New Haven, a landlord was fined about $14,000 for 56 housing code violations. Living in a dorm room is the same as living in a house, except for the fact that college students are not the ones in charge of keeping the building up to living standards. Every year, new people are moving into the dorm room that I previously lived in. When someone new moves in, the room should be deeply cleaned and up to code.
As a college student, I am responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the room, but I should not be responsible for an extreme amount of dust accumulation in an air vent.
Dusty vents can actually cause several symptoms due to breathing in the particles regularly. Certain vents, like the one I had, blow out air conditioning and heat, but when the vent is filled with dust, the air is no longer clean. Some symptoms that are caused from constant dust inhalation include coughing, allergies, asthma attacks, eye irritation, sore throat, fatigue, dizziness, headaches, sinus infections, and stress.
Air vents should be cleaned on a regular basis to avoid symptoms like these that can decline one’s health. Another problem is mildew, which refers to a certain type of mold. Exposure to mildew can cause illnesses like allergies, asthma, and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Mold and mildew can be found in many places, but when one is exposed regularly, the symptoms will remain persistent.
As of 2023, a law was passed by the legislature to take actions related to mold, such as developing standards to identify and assess mold in residential housing, assessing the threat to one’s health due to mold exposure, and remediating mold. Although the suspected mold in the dorms was never confirmed by outside sources, multiple students indicated being sick.
College campuses in Connecticut should be held accountable for this act because mold exposure creates a major health threat that ultimately affects one’s academic performance. Every student comes to college to learn and graduate with a degree, but how can I do so when the condition of my dorm room is affecting my health and ability to perform well in school? There should be more awareness and information on campus to express how health is impacted from being exposed to unhealthy living conditions.
Given these points, a change has to occur. The universities need to be held accountable for housing code violations, and students should be knowledgeable in how to take action on mold, mildew, and dust accumulation. I know for a fact I am not the only person who has had the same experience during college. I have always been told that this is a part of the college experience, but that should be no excuse for it to be swept under the rug.
No one wants to live in a place that has a negative impact on their health, so why should college students?
Bryanna Crooks is a rising senior at Sacred Heart University, majoring in health science with a public health concentration.