Kohlberg Hall is currently closed due to elevated levels of lead found in the building. On Aug. 14, members of the Swarthmore community received a notice of the temporary closure from Andrew Feick, associate vice president of sustainable facilities operations.
Over the summer, Kohlberg Hall underwent renovations, including infrastructure upgrades and pipe installation that connect the building to the new geoexchange system. The construction began in early June and was originally scheduled for completion by August. However, work was halted on Aug. 8 after hazardous levels of lead were detected in certain areas — primarily the basement and first floor sections — of the building.
According to Feick’s email to The Phoenix, concerns about lead contamination were first raised by a welder working in Kohlberg’s basement. After their welding clothes tested positive for lead with an off-the-shelf test kit, the welder reported the finding to their construction manager. This triggered the college to conduct the first round of surface wipe testing in Kohlberg on Aug. 5 through “an external, certified hazardous materials testing and remediation oversight firm,” which collected dust samples from different areas in the building and sent them to a lab for analysis.
The results came back positive two days later, on Aug. 7, verifying actionable lead levels in specific spaces of the building. Water in the building was also tested for lead and returned negative results. Contractors were notified the same day, and construction has been on hold since Aug 8.
To determine the source of the contamination, the same oversight firm conducted X-ray fluorescence (XRF) testing on specific materials inside the building. They concluded that the lead came from peeling paint in an underground pump room, which is part of the remains of the old Parrish Annex — a 19th-century structure that once stood where the Isabelle Cosby Courtyard (the “Kohlberg courtyard”) now sits.
Lead-based paint was widely used in the U.S. for its durability and bright color until Congress banned it in 1978 due to health concerns. Since the old Parrish Annex was painted long before the ban, flakes of peeled-off, lead-based paint have been lying in the pump room for decades. According to Feick’s email to The Phoenix, the paint would not pose a risk if it remained undisturbed. However, because the pump room is attached to Kohlberg’s basement, recent construction likely stirred up the lead dust, which then spread into Kohlberg.
Part of the reason the college didn’t foresee the incident is that the lead was neither recently brought onto campus nor from within Kohlberg, which was built and painted years after the 1978 ban and thus overlooked in the safety inspections. “While the College has protocols for testing older buildings for hazardous materials in advance of construction, those protocols are not applied to newer buildings, like Kohlberg, which was built in 1996,” Feick explained.
All lead in the pump room has now been removed or encapsulated.
According to Feick’s email, the college has offered optional blood testing through a health provider at Main Line Health for community members who frequented the building prior to construction, despite the exposure risk being low. Feick noted that the faculty, staff, and students who took part in the testing received their results last week, and none of the construction workers have tested positive for threshold lead levels to his knowledge.
“The College has assured us that the lead dust has been remedied and they’re offering tests to all employees working in Kohlberg seems to have contributed to reassure some concerned colleagues,” Associate Professor Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, chair of the modern languages and literatures department, told The Phoenix.
Since the start of the semester, faculty of the Spanish, sociology and anthropology, modern languages and literatures, and economics departments — all typically based in Kohlberg — were reassigned to temporary offices elsewhere. Courses originally scheduled in the building have also been relocated.
The modern languages and literatures department has been temporarily assigned to the basement of Beardsley Hall. “The offices there are not as nice as our home offices in Kohlberg, and we’re feeling a lot of sympathy for colleagues in ITS, who were in there before. But, ITS was super helpful getting our computers and the printer hooked up on very short notice, and our [administrative assistants] are wonderful at solving problems and giving good advice,” said Sibelan Forrester, Susan W. Lippincott professor of modern and classical languages.
Faculty members of the economics department, now temporarily based in Dan & Sidney West House, on the other hand, reported improvements in their working environment, including access to a larger community space than they originally had in Kohlberg. “We are hoping to find some ways to transfer the warmth and community spirit we’ve felt in Dan West back to Kohlberg and to provide econ students with more spaces in which to hang out with one another and with us,” said Professor Erin Bronchetti, chair of the economics department.
Kohlberg Hall is now expected to fully reopen after fall break on Oct. 17, once remediation measures bring lead levels down to a safe range, and delayed construction is finished. According to Feick’s email, duct cleaning — the last step of remediation — was completed on Monday, Sept. 15. The start-up of the air circulation system and another round of air testing will follow to ensure there is no remaining contamination before construction workers reenter the building and construction resumes.
