How to Achieve Healthy School Environments

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Over the last decade and more, a growing body of research has shown that children are more vulnerable to environmental hazards than adults (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2003). Children breathe more air per pound of body weight, they cannot identify hazards, and their developing organ systems may not be able to process toxic exposures. Research shows that a healthy school facility environment significantly and measurably affects children’s learning, behavior, and health (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 1997). Unfortunately, too many children are suffering the negative effects of an unhealthy school environment because schools are so frequently overcrowded, dirty, damp, dark, and polluted. But it takes more than money; it takes a commitment to real reforms to root out the causes of decayed and poorly constructed and maintained school buildings and the dire impacts on children’s health and learning.

EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, met with Healthy Schools Network and NASN executives and officers in early April 2009. The administrator was urged to put new priorities on children and on schools, consistent with a new federal law authorizing the EPA to address school environments. She was also given the recommendation to revive and strengthen the lapsed federal executive order on risks to children’s health. Jackson discussed plans for addressing school environments and her initiative to monitor air toxics outside schools in 22 states. Also at the meeting was a representative of the EPA’s Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) program and the director of the EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection.

Today, protecting children where they live, learn, and play is a top priority of the U.S. EPA. The EPA is the only federal agency with significant institutional history, expert staff, and programs to address school facility environments and children’s environmental health. It created an Office of Children’s Health Protection over a decade ago to help implement a federal executive order on Risks to Children’s Health (EO 13045), and since then, more than 14 different program offices at the EPA have published voluntary tools to address school environmental conditions. NASN and Healthy Schools Network are both IAQ Tools for Schools Partners with the EPA (see Table 1).

In addition to the various programs, a 2007 federal law shaped and won by Healthy Schools Network and its state and national partners of the national Coalition for Healthier Schools gives the EPA authority to formally issue guidelines on school environments and to work with the states to accelerate healthy schools for all children (High Performance Green Buildings Act of 2007, Section 504 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007). This exciting development was long awaited and puts the EPA on a track to provide funds to qualified state agencies to advance plans and programs. States will be better equipped to ensure that every child has an environmentally safe and healthy school that is clean and in good repair. Despite funding shortfalls, the EPA convened two advisory work groups on schools in the spring of 2009: a work group on School Siting and a work group on its Air Toxics Monitoring project. The efforts of both work groups will be available in the spring of 2010.

A National Collaborative Work Group on Green Cleaning and Chemical Policy Reform in Schools emerged from the annual meeting of the national Coalition for Healthier Schools in 2006. The impetus was New York State’s 2005 Executive Order and state law requiring state agencies and all public and private schools to use third party certified green cleaning products. Ten organizations worked together for nearly two years, including Healthy Schools Network and NASN, as well as AFT and ASFCME, to update standards for rating products as “green,” then to develop an “industry-free” and customizable online training toolkit. Today, in addition to New York, tough laws have been won in Connecticut, Hawaii, and Nevada and bills are pending in Oregon, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. The chemical industry opposed the strong law in Connecticut and won a weak law in Maryland. To connect to groups supporting high quality legislation, visit www.cleaningforhealthyschools.org.

How school nurses can advocate for healthy schools: locally, in the states, and federally:

Local

Having won new authorizations for the EPA, our current goals are to ensure that the EPA has the budget and staff resources it needs to swiftly implement the landmark initiative for federal guidelines and a new state grant program. In addition, we are urging the EPA to lead the development of a federal interagency strategy to address school environments and the need to offer public health services to children in harm’s way. For more information, please see the national coalition’s new report, SICK SCHOOLS 2009: America’s Continuing Environmental Health Crisis for Children (December 2009), at http://www.healthyschools.org.

We encourage all school nurses and their state organizations to address children’s environmental health at school. With 98% of all school-age children spending their days in school, students constitute the largest unprotected sector in the U.S.