EDITORIAL : POISONING CHILDREN; THERE'S NO EXCUSE FOR TOXIC PORTABLE CLASSROOMS.

IF the parents of Santa Clarita children and a local toxicologist can figure out that portable classrooms are making children sick, why can't the state Department of Health or the county Health Department?

And just as importantly, why can't school district officials?

The people who are in charge of assuring safety of children in schools seem clueless and indifferent about how to do their jobs.

For three years, state environmental and health officials have gone through the motions of informing districts that portable classrooms, used widely throughout the state to alleviate campus overcrowding, need to be properly ventilated.

The routine bureaucrat-to-bureaucrat mailings without any special alerts or warnings were dealt with like all the other junk mail people get these days: They were tossed by school district officials throughout California right into the garbage can.

It wasn't until a half-dozen students at Rio Vista Elementary in Saugus got sick and their parents got upset that alarm bells were set off and officials woke up from the torpor.

But not all of them.

When Gary Ordog, a toxicologist at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital who treated the Rio Vista youngsters, did some testing and found their blood and urine contained high levels of chemicals commonly used to manufacture temporary classrooms, county officials pleaded ignorance.

Dr. Shirley Fannin, director of the Los Angeles County Health Department's disease control program, did what she always does. She cautioned against drawing conclusions about the children's symptoms until all the test results are in.

It's one thing to be cautious. It's another to be comatose. And Fannin has a long record of seeing no danger, hearing no danger, warning of no danger until it is too late.

Ordog spotted a trend immediately. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that if you've got everyone in the room getting sick and they're getting better when they go home, and you've identified the chemical in the building materials and the same chemicals are in the patients' blood, ``you know the cause,'' Ordog said.

He seems the perfect candidate to head the state Department of Health, which is in dire need of a major new blood transfusion.

Meanwhile, armed with the department's pathetic oversight role in the health hazards at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the Simi Hills, Gov. Gray Davis has begun to shake up the agency that is supposed to be the public's watchdog on health issue. He has put the state Environmental Protection Agency in charge of continuing studies at the 50-year-old nuclear reactor and rocket fuel test facility.

He should move ahead vigorously at cleaning up the department that for too long has protected private corporations and public agencies far better than it has the public.

As for school districts, a class in common sense is in order.

After the youngsters became ill, the Saugus Union School District hired a consultant, the Machade Environmental Corp., which found that fresh-air vents in the portable never had been opened.

The consultant recommended opening them and instituting cleaning practices to avoid kicking up dust that could be tainted with chemicals.

It's bad enough when students come home no smarter than when they left for school. It's worse when they come home sick because of toxic classrooms.

The kids are right. Schools are poisoning our children.

That must stop!