N.C. State to Demolish Building After Tests Indicate Toxic Chemicals

North Carolina State University can demolish a campus building in which a toxic chemical linked to increased health risks was found. The clearance comes after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed off, according to a letter to the campus community and ABC11, a local broadcast station.

The building, Poe Hall, was first closed in November 2023. Since then, current and former students and employees who worked or studied within its walls have raised concerns that the contamination harmed them. Some said they’d expressed wariness of the building’s safety well before it was closed, and many have voiced frustration with the administration’s response since. 

Poe served as home to the College of Education and Psychology Department for decades. The university will construct a new facility on the site.

The final demolition follows several studies conducted by contractors and federal agencies as well as a lawsuit filed by the university against the chemical company that created the toxic substance used when building the facility. In March, a report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reaffirmed the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, which are highly toxic and carcinogenic, within Poe Hall and confirmed that exposure levels exceeded EPA standards in some cases but not all. 

The study also found that among female employees who worked in the building, the rate of melanoma was double that of what is expected among women over all. The rate of breast cancer among employees was also slightly higher. But NIOSH didn’t directly cite the presence of PCBs as the cause of the higher illness rates, saying cancer takes time to develop.

“There are many reasons why one group of people might have more cancer than another,” the report reads. “It could be due to exposure to harmful substances at work. It can also be because of other factors like differences in access to medical care and cancer screening, lifestyle differences, general variability in the occurrence of cancer, or limitations in evaluation methods.”