he was a tech expert and never lost his cool when we asked why isn't my computer working. he would press a power button and smile. he grew up in georgia and was a falcons fan and a snappy dresser. our thoughts and prayer with his family and loved one. daniel was only 29

but they found out the school had a problem. it's not the teachers or the test scores or everyone the other kids. the problem is the building. it's toxic. that's right. it wasn't safe for the children. and ps-51 isn't alone. as part of dr. sanjay gupta's on going investigation, we found out all over the country, children are going to schools that can make them sick. his first stop was ps-51. >> yeah, i need your lunch bag. >> okay. >> marisol carera is helping her son, brandon, get ready for the first day of school. brandon seems excited. but marisol, she seems nervous. >> i always pride myself with this. >> this is more than just a case of first-day jitters. >> in august, just weeks before school started, marisol saw this emergency meeting notice taped to brandon's school. ps-51 in the bronx.

that night, marisol joined an auditorium packed with worried parents. chancellor dennis wallcot opened the meeting with a dramatic statement. >> first, i want to start out by apologizing to all of you. >> and he followed the apology with disturbing news. >> we decided to do envierntal reviews. your school came with a result that we were not satisfied with with an elevated level of tce. >> tce or trichlorethelyne is a carcinogen that can cause cancer and even death. tests at ps-51 showed tce levels at over hundred times worse than what's considered safe. >> we thought we needed to shut the building down. >> parents are upset. >> you are using euphemisms. you're trying to be nice. that was a building that was storing chemicals that were

cancer-causing agents. and because of the vicinity and the children that are involved, you didn't care. >> you guys, board of ed, first allowed it to be used as a school for our children. and i think it's so inappropriate. >> but the parents were even more upset by the fact that the board of education discovered the contamination in january, 2011. yet, parents weren't told. and their children were kept in class through the end of the year. >> i voice my displeasure with our folks and myself as far as the timeliness of that notification. and from this point on, whenever where he whenever we get a positive notification around some type of environmental issue, the parent community, the staff and the school community will be notified immediately. >> i met marisol outside that contaminated school. >> so the staff, the kids, all of the people who are essentially in this building, a good chunk of their days, knew

nothing about this? >> no. the chancellor said he was sorry. >> how worried are you? >> very worried. >> marisol says even brandon, who's normally upbeat, is worried. >> do you like this new building? >> um-hmm. >> do you know why you're in the new building? >> because they closed down because of tce, a chemical. >> what do you know about tce? >> it's a cancer-causing chemical. >> we wanted to ask chancellor wallcot why they didn't tell parents about the toxic chemical in the school until months after they knew about it. but after repeated requests for an interview, his office declined to speak with cnn. >> for the sheer callousness and wrecklessness of the behavior towards kids, this is as bad as i've ever seen. >> lawyer shawn collins has won a number of tce contamination suits for people around the country.

>> the people who ran this school knew for at least 6 months that there were dangerous levels, in some cases, off-the-charts levels of chemical ins the air that these kids were breathing and yet they let those kids go there day in, day out every day for the rest of a semester. unconscionable. >> colin says the building should never have been a school. >> it's an old industrial site. not a place to have kids going to school. >> new york city records show ps-51 did have a car garage and a lamp factory. tce once used to degrease metal could have been leftover waste. many schools around the country are built on old industrial sites, according to lenny siegel who builds up the past of toxic schools. >> we don't consider contamination before we decide where to put the school. and particularly in new york city where they have so many leased schools on leased properties, most of which are

former industrial sites, at least many of which, i don't know the exact number, they had a policy of not looking for problems. >> siegel believes that ground and watt ir testing ought to be mandatory. he also says ps-51 was probably always problematic. just weeks before they started with their new school, parents were hit with more unsettling news. tests revealed slightly elevated levels of pce. >> what's going to happen to our children? >> parents showed up at another meeting to confront the chancellor. >> at first i have to say dennis wallcot, how dare you? >> the chancellor dismissed the results as insignificant. >> there was an open container. the levels came back down. >> but parents like marisol no longer trust the school system. >> what are you going to do? what's the plan?

>> i'm just going to watch him consistently. i mean, any little thing that he gets is going to be an alarm for me. he's 8 years old and it's scary to see what's going to happen with him. i pray that nothing is going to come of this. but you just don't know. >> when we come back. >> about a third of our schools have some kind of problem that causes respiratory problems in children. >> it is horrific.

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♪ ♪ [ man ] excuse me miss. [ gasps ] this fiber one 90 calorie brownie has all the moist, chewy, deliciousness you desire. mmmm. thanks. at 90 calories, the brownie of your dreams is now deliciously real. >> we've seen a school contaminated by a toxic chemical in new york where many schools sit on old industrial sites.

but the problem goes far beyond toxic chemicals. our kids spend half their waking day in school. but there are no air quality standards for classrooms in the united states. in fact, one school in three has air quality so bad, by e.p.a. standards, it can make children sick. some fed up parents didn't wait for summer vacation. they said their kids are staying home until thing get better. here, again, dr. sanjay gupta. >> in picturesque winston, connecticut, a 250-year-old town. a typical school day at hinsdale, elementary. but one-fourth grader, matthew aslin won't be there this morning. or any morning. >> now, if you look at him, what do you think? you think he's going to be friendly?

>> matthew's mother is home schooling her son this year. >> when he was out of school, he was well. when he was in school, he became ill. last year was, by far, his worst year. he missed more than 50 days of school. >> mold at hinsdale, she says, was making her son sick. >> this bag represents most of the medications that matthew was on last year. this is a mist. he was given erythromicin. when he left school, he left all of this behind him. he needs none of it. so this is garbage. >> alexandria pulled her after her persistent cough wouldn't go away. that was a tough decision because her father, paul, was on the school board at the time.

>> she was put on steroids and another medication. since she's been at another school, she hasn't been on any of it. >> the school district spent $16,000 this fall to get rid of the mold at hinsdale and the board is deciding whether to close the school temporarily to repair a leaky roof and other repairs. only some of the population is susceptible to mold or dust. but for those who are, the symptoms get increasingly severe. so many students and teachers were getting sick with respiratory problems that officials decided to tear down mckinley elementary and start from scratch. the school was riddled with mold. >> i started to get sick the second year when they put me in the basement classroom. >> mckinley's special ed teacher taught for 23 years before she became permanently disabled with a serious lung condition called chronic destructive pulmonary disease.

>> i've lost 50% of my lung capacity. i'm considered a moderate copd person. i've never had a pain-free day since then because i have chronic pain. i have muscle spasms. >> you can see another source of pain. ask her if she misses teaching. >> i'm sorry, that's a really loaded question for someone who's been forced to leave the profession when they didn't want to. i'm sorry. if you think connecticut is somehow unique, consider this. a 2010 survey of school nurses nationally found 40% of children and staff sickened by their school environment. and not all school districts have the money to fix the problem. here at southern middle school in reading, pennsylvania, concerns about air quality

closed the basement gym. and mold is visible in the computer lab. >> let me see. 1078 colonies, there's probably two or three different kinds of molds there. >> and take a look upstairs. >> when it rains heavily, the water actually rains into the room. we take these buckets and we collect the water. >> it's raining outside and inside. >> a teacher shot this video. >> what about mold? >> one of the residual effects to the water would be mold, certainly. >> drew miles is acting superintendent of schools. he's seen the video. he seds there's no money to fix that roof. >> the building continue to deteriorate when we only have a small amount of dollars to do minimal things like new roofing. >> there are some who say this

would never happen in my school. >> how big of a problem would you say air quality, in-door air quality is to a student's health? >> right now, the last estimates said about a third of our schools. about a third of our schools have some kind of problem that causeserer pir toir problems in children. >> it's horrible. >> it's horrible. would you send your kid to this school? >> um, to this school, would i send my child to this school? for the quality of education that these teachers can provide, yes. from a facilities standpoint, if i had another option, i would exercise it.

>> you're the super sben dent. you're the guy who they're going to say look, make it the school that you want to send your own kid to. but you can't do that. >> i can't with the financial means that i have now. >> i know the solution to this. and it costs money. and this, it's the right thing to do to get these schools. the money they need so that kids have healthy places to learn. >> the acting superintendent was fired this spring after we first aired this story on cnn. and just last month, the school board said they're laying off more than 10% of the teachers in reading, pennsylvania. no mention of repairs to the school. >> coming up, it was the worst food poisening out break in more than 30 years. it could have been prevented. we invest galt. powerful and se. that cloud is in the network,

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last fall, americans began to hear of people sickened and dying from eating cantaloupes infected with a bacteria called "listeria." then, in december, health officials announced it was over. by then, at least 30 people had died and it was the deadliest food out break in nearly 100 years. we decided to investigate how the outbreak happen and how it could have been prevented. >> you pick them out knowing how sweet it's going to taste and how good it's going to feel. summer cantaloupe.

you're eating right. you're eating healthy. and all the better if you were pregnant like michelle wakely. >> do you remember the cantaloupe? >> bringing it home thinking i'm pregnant? >> i'm going to eat healthy. getting fruit cups at restaurants. okay. it's going to be good. it's summertime. it's nice out. fruit is in season. tastes good. >> cantaloupes. >> yeah. >> that was last season. and since the moment she ate that kant lope, her life and her baby's life would never be the same. >> well, we went out late in the afternoon and we were at a store and i had to call dave and i said dave, i'm having terrible contractions. >> nearly three months before she was due, the baby was forcing her way out of her mother's poisoned body. >> it hurt so bad. the baby was trying to force her way out. >> it was lysteria. a dangerous infection for pregnant women, for the elderly, for small children.

the lysteria had come from cantaloupe from one farm. they just knew both the mother and the child were in trouble. >> when they told me this baby was going to be born 11 weeks early. >> it was awful. the doctor came in and he told you about the problems that could happen with a baby that was born that premature. it was devastating. she could be blind, she could be deaf, she could have heart problems, cerebral palsy and the list went on and on. >> michelle's baby was born in a rush within hours and as soon as she arrived, baby kendall was whisked away by a team of emergency doctors. michelle and david couldn't every hold her. barely saw her. >> when you saw her, what did you see? >> we saw her 6:00 or 7:00 the

following morning. it didn't really look like a real baby. it looked like something you look at in a picture. something with bones showing through. >> translucent. >> translucent. yes. >> this is kendall today. better. still developmentally behind her peers. >> it's almost like a little valve. you open it up. >> being fed through a button in her stomach. still under 24 hour care. you still don't know what kendall is facing? >> correct. >> you have a couple years, at least, to wait, watch and worry. >> every milestone is is she going to do it? is she not going to do it. is she going to be three months

late because she was born three months early? still, we won't know everything until she goes to school and starts to learn. >> kendall and michelle are among the lucky ones. they lived. we now know according to federal statistics the listeria outbreak last september was the most deadly food out break in the u.s. in nearly a century. one of the worst three outbreaks ever. nearly three dozen americans died. as people began to die and fall sick, investigators from the food and drug administration and centers for disease control fanned out across two dozen states. they took samples of blood and samples of fruit still sitting in refrigerators. and the trail of evidence, the cantaloupes themselves, led to this remote part of eastern colorado and one single farm. >> it truly was an a ha moment.

>> dr. jim gordy was the chief investigator on the case. >> and you were able to go back to all of these victims' families and they were told look it, cantaloupes grown on this particular small farm for our southeast of denver is what caused the death of your loved one. >> yes, the evidence is very, very strong in this case. it's some of the strongest evidence i've ever seen. >> jenson farms has been a fixture of this part of colorado. since the early 1900s when the first jenson arrived from denmark. since then, this dry dirt has been passed from generation to generation. two years ago, it went to eric and ryan jenson. they grew up growing cantaloupes, knew the business by heart. last year, they decided to make just a few changes. and it would cost them erveg. >> they turned the operation upside down with some

significant changes they made. it's a very tragic alignment. poor facility design, poor design of equipment and very poor post-handling. if any of those things would have been prevented, this tragedy probably wouldn't have occurred. >> when we come back, what went so wrong and why didn't anyone notice? >> how could anyone have a food processing plant without any local, state or federal inspection? with the spark cash card from capital one,

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i'm don lemon. here are your headlines. right now, the season's first tropical storm is turning west. debbie is packing 50 mile an hour winds and is expected to intensify over the next 36 hours. storm warnings are up from louisiana to texas. former penn state football coach could be sentenced in about 90 days. he's under suicide watch in pennsylvania's center county jail.

i'm don lemon keeping you informed, cnn, the most trusted name in news. >> we now return to cnn presents with your host. >> last fall, federal inspectors determined a small farm in eastern colorado was the source for contaminated cantaloupes that caused the deadliest food outbreak in more than 100 years. what happened at that farm and the system that failed to stop the outbreak. my investigation continues.

>> the worst ford-borne out break in nearly a hundred years began at this farm. two young brothers, the fourth generations of jensons decided to change the way they packed the melons their family had sold for decades. they will not say on the record just why. but we know what they did. cantaloupes were cleaned with a new machine. actually, a secondhand potato washer. and the farmers eliminated a microbial wash used by many farms. the fda would later find out that jenson farm had created the perfect conditions to grow the dangerous bacteria listeria. >> it was a very tragic alignment. poor facility design, poor design of equipment and very unique post-harvest handling. if any one of those things would have been prevented, this tragedy probably wouldn't have even occurred.

>> the melons shipped across the country were time bombs. the sick, the elderly and unborn babies the most vulnerable. since september, more than 30 dead, one as recently as march. every single death linked genetically to the cantaloupe at jensen farms. >> so we had lots and lots of evidence that basically this was definitively -- as definitively as possible a smoking gun that this was the source of the contamination. >> what many people don't realize is most of the produce we eat is never inspected by any government body. the fda doesn't have the money or the manpower to do it. the food industry did come up with its own voluntary inspection system called food audits. but we found that system is full of holes. >> just days before the outbreak, jensen farms paid a

private company to audit their operation. they sent a 26-year-old with little experience to inspect the jensen farm. james diorio gave the farm a 96%. a superior grade. but on the front page, he noted the jensens had removed the microbial wash. >> having anti-microbial in any wash water is absolutely essential and, therefore, as soon as one hears that that's not present, that's an instant red flag. >> trevor is one of the top in the nation on growing and harvesting melons safely. >> what i would expect from an auditor is they would walk into the facility, look at the wash and dry line, know that they weren't using an anti-microbial and say the audit is done. you have to stop your operation. you can't continue.

>> the auditor, james diorio would not return cnn's calls. the subcontractor, bio food safety and primus labs declined cnn's requests. to some food safety experts, the third party that the jensens relied on is a joke. >> the so-called food safety audits are not worth anything. they are not food safety audits. they have nothing to do with food safety. >> dr. monsore runs one of the nation's largest food-safety testing and consulting labs for both industry and the government. he says consumers should have no faith in the current system of farm audits because of a conflict of interest. farms pay for their own inspections. >> if this industry is sincere and they want to have their product be of any use to anyone, they should be printing their audit reports on toilet paper.

the problem is that we have never had the recall, outbreak or a situation where, you know, several people died where the company in question was not audited and did not have scores of 96%, 97%, 95%, 98%. >> while critics say some do a good job, it's voluntary. there's no regulations. for now, the audit system, however flawed, is what most farms rely on. why? because in four generations of farming, the fda's jim gorney and his team were the first food safety officials ever to set foot on jensen farms. >> prior to your arrival, they had never been to the farm? >> they had not. >> why should anyone be allowed

to have a processing plant without the expertise and without having the food safety systems in place, produce food and send it into homes? so they i've had failures at multiple levels. >> back in indiana, michelle doesn't care much about the f.d.a., the private inspector, the audits. she got sick eating cantaloupe from farmers who should have known better. >> monday, i am going to go to that farm and i am going to speak to those farmers. what would you like me to ask them? >> why? because they said that their facilities weren't clean. everything about the process was not done correctly in accordance to the guidelines issued by the government. there were so many things they weren't doing correctly. why? to save a dollar? people have died now.

>> we met with ryan and eric jensen, the two brothers who now run jensen farms for about an hour in their office behind me. it was all off the record. not to be quoted. jensen farms has now filed for bankruptcy. its assets likely to be sold to pay medical claims of those sickened or settlements to families of those who died. most troubling of all, there is nothing in place, no protective systems, that could prevent this from happening again. >> just last year, the president signed the food safety modernization act into law. but even with the new law, farms still may not be inspected more than once every 7-10 years. many are not convinced the problems will be solved any time soon. up next, cutting-edge medicine.

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you know what's exciting? graduation. when i look up into my students faces, i see pride. you know, i have done something worthwhile. when i earned my doctorate through university of phoenix, that pride, that was on my face. i am jocelyn taylor. i'm committed to making a difference in people's lives, and i am a phoenix. visit phoenix.edu to find the program that's right for you. enroll now. our next story is on a subject that scares many. mental illness. because there's so much we don't understand. in any given year, 5% of americans have serious mental health problems. many cases, ptsd, mood disorders, addiction. but, tonight, dr. sanjay gupta is going to show you a new kind

of surgery that literally changes the way our brains work. >> for as long as edie geiten could remember, she could not get the sad thoughts out of her head. >> my mother used to say to me, smile, edie, why don't you smile? and i would give something like that, maybe. or just think what is there to smile about? >> at 19, her blank face reflected what would later be diagnosed as severe depression. >> that expression is the best i could do. >> what's it like to look at it now? >> i feel sorry for her. i just -- i feel bad for her that she couldn't smile.

that she couldn't talk to people about, you know, what is going on with her that would lead her to cut her wrists several months later. >> it was her sophomore year. academic and social pressures were the trigger. and one night -- >> for reasons that are inexplicable to me, even now, got up and started playing with the razor. >> and you cut your wrists? >> um-hmm. >> did you cut both of your wrists? >> yeah. >> she went into counseling, but it didn't help. over the next 40 years, she tried everything else, including psychiatric drugs and electroconvulsive shock therapy. >> and then there was a few years that i think i felt pretty good. but then i went back down and i went back down very deep. >> there were two more suicide attempts before she conquered the demon.

what finally worked? well, if you could look inside edie geiten's head today, this is what you'd see. >> i don't think about it, but i have a electrodes in my brain. >> two electrodes. the thickness of angel hair pasta powered by a battery pack under her collarbone. >> and the wire goes up here. and then into my -- yeah, into my brain. >> specifically to a part of the brain known as area 25. it's an experimental treatment. >> so what are we looking at here? >> pioneered by neurologist helen neighbor. since the mid 1990s, maber has been using high-tech images to study the brain images that control our moods. she found out that area 25 is a junction box in the center of it all.

>> okay. here we go, charlie. maber's research showed that in depressed patients, area 25 is relatively overactive. >> here, again, you can see area 25, except now it's red as opposed to blue. because this is an increase. >> she theorized that in patients like edie geiten, who did not respond to conventional treatments, area 25 was somehow stuck in overdrive. >> it was a matter of following the trail. >> the trail led to the operating room. and a procedure known as deep brain stimulation, d.b.s. >> here at emery, where i'm on staff, my colleagues have been using deep brain stimulation for more than 15 years to treat movement disorders, such as parkinson's disease. but dr. maber wanted to use

d.b.s. to target area 25 for patients with severe depression. >> so beginning in 2003, working with a brain surgeon in toronto, she began testing it on six patients. it had never been done before. >> we had patients who were profoundly without any options and suffering. and we had a hypothesis. >> what did you worry about most in terms of potential side effects from actually stimulating 25. >> because of its vital position, its junction box location, for all we knew we were going to activate it and make people feel worse. >> instead, maber saw two-thirds of the patients get significantly better. she has since reported significant results for 31 others. >> we not only get them better, but with continued stimulation with this device, they stay well. >> people who live nd a block of

emotional ice for years. >> it's not that you won't be happy or that you aren't happy. it's that you can't be happy. >> not even when her grand niece, susan, was born. >> and somebody handed her to me and i held her but i didn't even put her face to mine. i just held her. but i was going through the motions and i felt really nothing. >> nothing? >> nothing. nothing. >> on the day of surgery, edie's head was mounted in a rigid frame. >> the sound of the drill, the feeling of it and my teeth are going like this. i think it hit home to me that you're having brain surgery. somebody is going into your brain. you get a 50% annual bonu. and everyone likes 50% more cash -- well, except her. no! but, i'm about to change that. ♪ every little baby wants 50% more cash... ♪

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imagine living in a hole so dark you cannot see. so deep you cannot escape. that's severe depression. now doctors are experimenting

with a cutting-edge treatment. battery-powered brains. how does it work? can it cure depression? dr. sanjay gupta continues his investigation. >> in an operating room in emery university in atlanta, these doctors are trying to use deep-brain stimulation to turn off severe depression. >> choosing the target. >> the target is area 25. a junction box for brain circuits that control our moods. >> our patients are miserable. it's beyond sadness. they spend most of their day just sitting there often thinking, you know, why can't i just die. >> at first, patients are lightly sedated. as dr. robert gross drills two holes. with an instrument to guide him,

he then inserts the electrodes. to make sure the electrodes are in the right spot, we can actually listen for neurons firing in the brain. the grey matter sounds like this. the white matter is silent. and that's where they want the electrodes. the white matter. just below area 25. >> we just confirmed that all the electrodes are basically in the right place. >> it was a procedure, just like this, done on edie geiten. >> what were the risks? what did they tell you? >> brain damage, infection, death. >> did you have second thoughts about doing this? >> no. >> it was that bad? >> it was that bad. >> deep brain stimulation would change her life. you could see it happen when she was wide awake in the operating room with the doctors. >> are you okay, edie? >> yeah. >> okay. >> as a benchmark, they ask edie to rate her feelings on a scale of 1-10 starting with dread.

>> it feels like the dread is getting worse. >> two minutes later, they turned on one of the four contacts. >> how does that feel right now? what's the dread right now? >> maybe a three. >> a drop from 8 to 3. but doctors would soon get a better result. remember, before the surgery, edie could not connect emotionally with her grand niece, susan. then, they turned on contact number 2.

>> it brings tears to your eyes to see somebody that is in such pain and then that goes away. >> when you say you almost smiled, does something strike you as funny? >> it was actually -- i was thinking of playing it. >> i started thinking about susan, little susan. i thought i was holding -- you know, i was holding her with her face to me. right there in that little brain surgery. i felt feelings that i thought were gone. >> what is that like just to think that a machine with electricity can transform your emotions like that? >> it felt fantastic. i didn't care what was doing it. it just felt great. >> it's been five years. edie is one of dr. maber's most dramatic success stories.

>> i don't feel good all of the time. but this gives me the capacity that if i can, if there is joy in my life, i have the capacity to feel it. >> but what exactly is going on? what is it doing to the brain circuits. >> if area 25 is so important, why isn't everyone getting it done? >> maybe they're not the right patient. that means we've got to understand the biology better. >> in addition to depression, started looking for obsessive-compulsive disorder, epilepsy, ter et's syndrome and alzheimer's. in the meantime, edie geiten is thankful for her new life.

with the battery pack delivering 1/1000th of the power that a flashlight uses. >> do you feel electricity or anything? >> i don't feel anything in my head at all. >> she's active with the mental health advocacy and support group. and she recently traveled to italy with old friends from college. >> and that smile was real. i was okay. >> it's only been an issue once. >> at the airport, i just go and i say -- and they say pacemaker. and i say yes. at one time, i said it's brain electrodes, and i never did that again. the woman patted me down like she was afraid i would explode. >> well, you've got to love airport security. a couple of final points. dr. mayberg and another doctor hold a patent on the procedure.