Canada

In a lengthy letter to students, the dean of the faculty of medicine said the anatomy lab in the Tupper Building was tested over the summer and results showed that formaldehyde levels no longer meet provincial standards.

The school attempted to fix the problem through changes to the ventilation system, but it failed a second round of tests.

This was the first time formaldehyde was tested in a decade, he said. When the tests were done this summer, Dalhousie discovered that Nova Scotia had lowered the acceptable level in 2017.

Those regulations allow 0.1 parts per million, whereas the former threshold was 0.3 ppm.

Anderson did not explain why Dal had not conducted tests in 10 years, nor did he reveal the exact results.

"Although our test results are no longer compliant within Nova Scotia, our current testing levels at the Tupper Building laboratory are compliant with the previous allowable thresholds in Nova Scotia and the current allowable thresholds in New Brunswick," he wrote.

Dalhousie has now stopped work with specimens at all three medical school locations: Halifax, Cape Breton and Saint John.

Air quality testing is underway in the Saint John lab.