Fifty-four million K-12 students spend every school day in 130,000 public and private schools. These children are more vulnerable to environmental toxins than adults. Yet many children are exposed in school to some combination of contaminated air, polluted drinking water, molds, asbestos, PCBs, formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, toxic cleaning solutions, pesticides, and other environmental toxins. Seven million teachers and other school employees also are exposed.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was established to assure safe working environments for adults. However, no such agency has been similarly charged to assure safe school environments for children; and no data are collected to assess the extent to which children are exposed to toxins in schools.
U.S. schools are in such disrepair that one analysis suggested it would cost $270 billion just to bring our schools back to their original conditions, and twice that to bring them up-to-date. Any effort to renovate schools should maintain some focus on reducing toxins in schools.
Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Inspector General concluded that, largely due to budget cuts, EPA is not doing what it could to help reduce environmental toxins in schools. Helpfully, EPA has issued voluntary State School Environmental Health Guidelines; and the Healthy Schools Network along with the Coalition for Healthier Schools has issued Towards Healthy Schools 2015, a state-by-state assessment of America’s environmental health crisis for children. NEA Health Information Network (NEA HIN) Executive Director Jerry Newberry supported this report, “NEA HIN’s teachers and education support professionals understand the connection between a healthy school and academic achievement. By working together, we can make the changes needed to make every school a safe and healthy place for both students and staff.”
What can you do to help reduce toxins in your school? For the past 10 years the Healthy Schools Network in collaboration with EPA has sponsored National Healthy Schools Day; held this year on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. Go to the National Healthy Schools Day Website to learn what others are doing—and what you can do—to reduce toxins in schools. You can make a difference!
Dr. Lloyd Kolbe is a member of the NEA HIN Board of Directors.