An environmental investigation is underway at Metropolitan State University of Denver after three faculty members who work in the same office were diagnosed with breast cancer within six months of each other, sparking concerns their illnesses somehow could be related to their surroundings.

The area under investigation by two independent organizations is a specific suite of four offices on the second floor of the West Classroom building on Denver’s Auraria Campus, said Larry Sampler, vice president of administration and chief operating officer at Metro State.

To protect the identity of the employees with cancer who brought the matter to the university administration’s attention, Sampler declined to further identify the location of the offices in question.

At a town hall and news conference Thursday morning at Auraria, Sampler assured the room filled with faculty members that there was no data to indicate the West Classroom building or any other site on campus was unsafe.

“The building is a safe building,” Sampler said. “We’re not doing the testing because we think or suspect the cancer was caused by the building. We’re doing the testing because a department of health professionals raised the question that this doesn’t look right. We’re responding to the perception, not the reality.”

The West Classroom building houses 41 classrooms, 130 offices and two student lounges. The classrooms can hold about 25 to 30 students each, and include a few computer labs, said Blaine Nickeson, Auraria Higher Education Center’s chief of safety and communications.

The Colorado Department of Health and Environment is investigating whether the multiple diagnoses qualify as a cancer cluster.

A cancer cluster is defined as “a greater-than-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Unfortunately, cancer is relatively common, but cancer clusters are rare — especially those that are linked to an environmental exposure,” said Kristy Richardson, state toxicologist at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

To determine whether the situation is an official cancer cluster, the state health department will consider questions such as:

Have many more cases than expected of one specific type of cancer been found?

Is the cancer in an age group in which it usually is not found?

Is it a rare type of cancer?

Does scientific evidence support the link between an exposure in question and cancer?

The situation began last Wednesday when Sampler received an email from one of his employees who had been diagnosed with breast cancer that day and was concerned because two of her coworkers nearby also were recently diagnosed with breast and liver cancer.

Two years ago, Sampler said, another staff member in the office died of lung cancer.

“This is an unfortunate situation,” Sampler said. “For some people, it borders on tragic, but I can say with some pride that AHEC (Auraria Higher Education Center) and MSU are focusing as aggressively and as diligently as we can to keep everybody informed.”

According to Metro State’s student news outlet The Metropolitan, asbestos was discovered in West Classroom in 2010 and dealt with until test results came back clean. In 2016, the physical education room, recreation and event center were closed as a result of asbestos. And in April, locker rooms at the university were shuttered because of asbestos, the Metropolitan reported.

Colleen Walker, CEO of the Auraria Higher Education Center, said during the town hall that the West Classroom has been recently checked for routine maintenance and passed with a clean bill of health.

“Within the last two years, the water has been tested, and it’s fine,” Walker said. “The actual tubes and the fittings are at a standard that exceeds some of the standards within the city of Denver, so we can have confidence in the water of our buildings. There is asbestos in every college campus across the U.S. and every state-owned building… It’s when asbestos has been disturbed that we have a problem. We know all the construction projects we’ve done, we’ve handled according to standard operating procedures and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards.”

Testing by two independent agencies has been ongoing since Monday. Sampler said the agencies do not have ties to the university, but he declined to name them. The testing includes walking around the area of concern in West Building and taking air quality samples and readings for a laundry list of possible problems, including heavy metals or volatile organic chemicals.

The results of the testing should be completed by Aug. 8 and will be shared with the university community before faculty return on Aug. 12.

If there is any indication that environmental hazards exist, Sampler said the university does have contingency plans on how and where to conduct upcoming classes and house faculty members while repairs are made.

Vonda Knox, program coordinator for Metro State’s department of sociology and anthropology, spoke up during the meeting, asking what to do if she had concerns about the air quality in her department.

Knox explained to The Denver Post that a few years ago, a flood in her department had caused “devastation” to the building, including environmental problems that Knox said the university handled well.

She worried that although much of the department was renovated, the carpets remained the same and wondered whether dangerous particles were trapped in the carpet that could become airborne if disturbed.

Sampler assured faculty members that if they had specific concerns about environmental hazards in their working area, they should go through their department chairs and deans to elevate the issues to his level so they could be checked out.

Sampler said Metro State officials do not plan on investigating other buildings or areas of West Classroom because they have no reason to believe anything is unsafe, but they welcomed faculty to share their concerns.

Employees are welcome to seek mental health support if the disclosures about employee cancer cases are upsetting. Staff are also welcome to contact Metro State’s Office of Human Resources at 303-615-0009.