A west Auckland primary school is shifting children out of four classrooms these school holidays after two years of testing finally traced a stubborn smell to chemicals in the ground beneath the building.
Whenuapai School, on the north western edge of Auckland near the air force base, has lived with the odour for a long time. Anecdotal reports of the smell stretch back about 25 years, but the issue only became a formal matter in May 2024 when a caregiver raised the alarm. Since then the school has worked through round after round of testing to figure out what was going on and whether it was safe.
The answer, when it came, pointed downwards. Air tests in April 2026 picked up phenols, and follow up work in June identified dimethylphenols and cresols, a group of compounds that are often petrochemical based and can be toxic in concentrated form. The school was built in the 1950s on the site of an old chicken farm, and the test report concluded the smell was most likely rising out of the ground rather than coming from anything inside the rooms.
One test in particular settled the decision. Staff had noticed the smell clinging to the woollen blankets that children used on the classroom floors, so those blankets were sent away for analysis. The samples came back showing compounds at between 2.8 and 29 times the levels found in control samples, while teachers’ clothing showed phenol readings 2 to 13 times higher than controls. As principal Adam Cels told RNZ, “The material test that was the one that made us decide to move.” The report noted that “the blankets were regularly used on the floor which supports the original theory that the odour is coming from below the building.”
For families the most unsettling part has been how the smell travels. Staff and parents have described the odour lingering on skin, hair, clothing and school bags after children leave the rooms, and even hanging around in wardrobes at home once the uniforms are put away.
Despite that, the health message has been consistent. Cels said the concentrations are extremely low, “You’re talking in the parts per billion,” and that the expert advice has been reassuring. Scientists, occupational hygienists and Health New Zealand have all assessed the classrooms, and the principal said “all of that advice has stated that the levels are at a safe level for us to be in operation.” The Ministry of Education has taken the same line, saying there is “no evidence of an immediate risk to health.”
Even so, the school has decided it does not want children spending their days in rooms that carry a smell, safe or not. Over the July holidays the four affected classes are being moved into a newer block on the site, which lets pupils return to term without the odour that has followed them around for years.
What happens to the original rooms is a longer question. The test report set out three options, replacing the classrooms entirely, remediating the ground beneath them, or, if neither is possible in the short term, fitting stronger ventilation and monitoring the air. None of those is quick or cheap, and the school has said investigations into the exact source are continuing.
The path to answers has not been entirely smooth. When approached, the National Public Health Service first pointed the school towards Auckland Council’s resource management team, describing it as a council matter, and advised staff to keep increasing ventilation so the odour did not build up. A public health spokesperson later corrected an earlier statement that had linked the smell to buried waste, which underlined how much about the site remains uncertain even after two years of work.
For now the focus is practical. Whenuapai families will send their children back after the break to classrooms that do not carry the smell, while the adults keep working on what lies beneath the old ones. It is the kind of slow, unglamorous problem that rarely makes headlines, a building quietly breathing something up through its floor, and it has taken persistence from parents, staff and testers to get even this far.
The case sits alongside a run of recent New Zealand stories in which the fabric of ageing school buildings has come under scrutiny, from asbestos found in play sand to gas leaks and mould in classrooms. It is a reminder that a lot of the country’s schools are decades old and were built on land whose earlier uses are not always well recorded. You can read the original reporting from RNZ and 1News.
Have your children ever come home from school with a story like this, or has your community dealt with a mystery smell that took years to explain? Share your experience in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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