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Tag: Healthy Schools

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EPA, 2015.

EPA’s IAQ Tools for Schools guidance has been implemented successfully in tens of thousands of schools nationwide. The Framework for Effective School IAQ Management synthesizes the accumulated learning of more than 800 schools involved in a national survey of IAQ management practices; 200 applicants for IAQ Tools for Schools awards; and in- depth interviews, site visits and analysis of five faculty school districts. The Framework provides a common language
to describe the drivers of IAQ program success; detailed guidance on the proven strategies, organizational approaches, and leadership styles that are fundamental to program effectiveness; and a clear vision of the pathway to school IAQ excellence. Its highly flexible and adaptable structure allows any school, regardless of location, size, budget or condition, to use the Framework to launch, reinvigorate and sustain an effective IAQ management program.

The Framework: Key Drivers

The Six Key Drivers are the essential elements of effective and enduring IAQ management programs. Applying a cycle of continuous assessment, planning, action and evaluation, the Six Key Drivers work synergistically to deliver effective school IAQ management programs. The Six Key Drivers are:

  • Organize for success;
  • Communicate with everyone, all the time;
  • Assess your environments continuously;
  • Plan your short- and long-term activities;
  • Act to address structural, institutional and behavioral issues, and
  • Evaluate your results for continuous improvement.The Framework: Technical SolutionsThe Six Technical Solutions define the most common issues that schools need to address to effectively manage IAQ risks. When addressed systematically
    and aggressively, an IAQ program that focuses on the Six Technical Solutions will deliver a healthier school environment. The Six Technical Solutions are grounded in the IAQ Tools for Schools Action Kit, the Center for Disease Control’s School Health Policies and Programs Study and the management practices of leading school IAQ programs.

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Environmental Law Institute, 2016.

Energy efficiency continues to be an important component of federal, state, and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. School facility upgrades that increase energy efficiency can help school districts advance their educational mission by reducing energy and other operating costs. Facility upgrades that protect and improve indoor air quality (IAQ) also support the core mission of schools by promoting staff and student health, productivity, and attendance. There is now broad recognition that it is possible to achieve both energy efficiency and indoor air quality goals as part of a school retrofit project. When undertaking energy efficiency and other facility upgrades, early consideration of IAQ issues can help schools avoid unintended, negative consequences and reap the twin benefits of energy savings and a healthier, more productive school environment.

State laws, regulations, and guidance can facilitate the integration of IAQ and energy efficiency goals. This report discusses three areas of potential policy development: state funding for school facility upgrades, energy savings performance contracting, and regulation of indoor pollutants during renovation. While these are not the only policy areas ripe for consideration, the examples described throughout the report reflect a variety of strategies for maximizing the health benefits of energy retrofits and other school facility upgrades.

State Funding for School Facility Upgrades

States operate a variety of programs that provide grants, loans, and other financing for school energy efficiency retrofits and other facility upgrades, and these programs are particularly important for school districts that have limited resources for capital-intensive measures. Currently there are few state funding programs that affirmatively require or encourage the integration of IAQ and energy goals, however the report highlights examples of policy strategies that have been adopted and could be expanded in the future. These include:

  •  Establishing energy-related IAQ improvements as allowable or priority uses of energy efficiency funding;
  •  Considering non-energy benefits, such as enhanced IAQ, in awarding energy-efficiency funding; and
  •  Establishing IAQ measures as priorities for general school renovation and repair programs.

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Published on

Environmental Law Institute, 2015.

Early care and education programs play an important role in helping children reach their full potential in school and throughout their lives. Six million children under five years old receive care outside of their homes – about 30 percent of all children in this age group.1 The facilities that provide this care are numerous and diverse, including approximately 300,000 licensed child care centers and child care homes across the country.2 As the number of children in licensed child care has grown, so has public recognition of the importance of the child care setting to children’s physical, emotional, and intellectual development.

This recognition has led to significant changes in standards of quality for licensed child care programs. Standards currently in place throughout the U.S. cover a wide array of elements for ensuring a healthy, safe, and enriching environment – from caregiver qualifications and program curriculum, to fire safety and nutrition. In recent years, facility standards for child care have begun to address exposure to environmental hazards as well. This shift reflects greater scientific knowledge of the potential harm to children’s health from exposure to environmental contaminants, as well as the availability of well-established facility operation and maintenance practices that can be put in place to help create healthier indoor environments.

The purpose of this report is to provide information to help states strengthen their laws, regulations, and programs to address indoor environmental contaminants in child care facilities. The report is designed for policymakers, agency officials, non-governmental organizations and associations, and others who work to promote quality child care and advance children’s health. The following chapters offer an overview of how policies currently address several key indoor environmental quality (IEQ) issues in licensed child care facilities. For each issue, the report highlights examples of policy strategies for states to consider, along with notable non-regulatory initiatives that are being implemented by state agencies.

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Environmental Law Institute, 2015.

In January 2015, the Environmental Law Institute published Reducing Environmental Exposures in Child Care Facilities: A Review of State Policy. The report, prepared jointly by ELI and the Children’s Environmental Health Network, discusses state policies addressing exposure to indoor air contaminants in licensed child care facilities. This paper focuses on another important environmental health issue for child care facilities: drinking water quality.

A variety of national policies and program initiatives aim to ensure that children who spend time in child care facilities drink water throughout the day.1 Ensuring the quality of drinking water at child care facilities is important to children’s healthy development and helps advance the broad goals of early care and education programs. This paper provides an overview of how existing state laws and regulations across the United States address drinking water quality in the licensed child care context, with a particular emphasis on drinking water from private wells.

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Healthy Schools Campaign, 2016

Healthy Schools Campaign and Openlands are pleased to announce the release of Green Schoolyards: A Growing Movement Supporting Health, Education and Connection with Nature.

This new report documents the journeys and lessons of green schoolyard programs across the country and is informed by a rich dialogue that has been taking place at the national and local levels about how to help children, families, schools, communities and our environment thrive. It shares information and stories as well as tangible steps communities can take to develop their own green schoolyards.

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Forns, et al., 2016

Background: The available evidence of the effects of air pollution and noise on behavioral development is limited, and it overlooks exposure at schools, where children spend a considerable amount of time.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the associations of exposure to traffic-related air pollutants (TRAPs) and noise at school on behavioral development of schoolchildren.

Methods: We evaluated children 7–11 years of age in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) during 2012–2013 within the BREATHE project. Indoor and outdoor concentrations of elemental carbon (EC), black carbon (BC), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were measured at schools in two separate 1-week campaigns. In one campaign we also measured noise levels inside classrooms. Parents filled out the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) to assess child behavioral development, while teachers completed the attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder criteria of the DSM-IV (ADHD-DSM-IV) list to assess specific ADHD symptomatology. Negative binomial mixed-effects models were used to estimate associations between the exposures and behavioral development scores.

Results: Interquartile range (IQR) increases in indoor and outdoor EC, BC, and NO2 concentrations were positively associated with SDQ total difficulties scores (suggesting more frequent behavioral problems) in adjusted multivariate models, whereas noise was significantly associated with ADHD-DSM-IV scores.

Conclusion: In our study population of 7- to 11-year-old children residing in Barcelona, exposure to TRAPs at school was associated with increased behavioral problems in schoolchildren. Noise exposure at school was associated with more ADHD symptoms.

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United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2013

This guide is intended for use by school officials and child care providers responsible for the maintenance and/or safety of school and child care facilities including the drinking water. The purpose of this guide is to describe the importance of implementing best management practices for drinking water in schools and child care facilities and how a school or child care facility would go about implementing these practices. This guide is specifically for schools and child care facilities that receive water from water utilities or water suppliers such as cities, towns and water districts. This guide is not a regulation itself, nor does it change or substitute for those provisions and regulations. Thus, it does not impose legally binding requirements on EPA, states, municipal water systems, schools or child care facilities. This guide does not confer legal rights or impose legal obligations upon any member of the public. While EPA has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information in this guide the obligations of the regulated community are determined by statutes, regulations or other legally binding requirements. In the event of a conflict between the information in this guide and any statute or regulation, this document would not be controlling.

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United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2013

This guide is intended for use by school officials and child care providers responsible for the maintenance and/or safety of school and child care facilities including the drinking water. The purpose of this guide is to describe the importance of implementing best management practices for drinking water in schools and child care facilities and how a school or child care facility would go about implementing these practices. This guide is specifically designed for schools and child care facilities that have their own well and, therefore, are classified as a public water system. This guide is not a regulation itself, nor does it change or substitute for those provisions and regulations. Thus, it does not impose legally binding requirements on EPA, states, public water systems, schools or child care facilities. This guide does not confer legal rights or impose legal obligations upon any member of the public. While EPA has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information in this guide the obligations of the regulated community are determined by statutes, regulations or other legally binding requirements. In the event of a conflict between the information in this guide and any statute or regulation, this document would not be controlling.

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Center for Disease Control (CDC), 2014

Drinking water can contribute to good health, and schools are in a unique position to promote healthy, dietary behaviors, including drinking water. More than 95% of children and adolescents are enrolled in schools, and students typically spend at least 6 hours at school each day.  Ensuring that students have access to safe, free drinking water throughout the school environment gives them a healthy alternative to sugar-sweetened beverages before, during, and after school. Access to safe, free drinking water helps to increase students’ overall water consumption, maintain hydration, and reduce energy intake, if substituted for sugar-sweetened beverages. In addition, adequate hydration may improve cognitive function among children and adolescents, which is important for learning. Drinking water, if fluoridated, also plays a role in preventing dental caries (cavities).

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ENVIRONMENTAL LAW INSTITUTE, January 2016.

Energy efficiency continues to be an important component of federal, state, and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. School facility upgrades that increase energy efficiency can help school districts advance their educational mission by reducing energy and other operating costs. Facility upgrades that protect and improve indoor air quality (IAQ) also support the core mission of schools by promoting staff and student health, productivity, and attendance. There is now broad recognition that it is possible to achieve both energy efficiency and indoor air quality goals as part of a school retrofit project. When undertaking energy efficiency and other facility upgrades, early consideration of IAQ issues can help schools avoid unintended, negative consequences and reap the twin benefits of energy savings and a healthier, more productive school environment.

State laws, regulations, and guidance can facilitate the integration of IAQ and energy efficiency goals. This report discusses three areas of potential policy development: state funding for school facility upgrades, energy savings performance contracting, and regulation of indoor pollutants during renovation. While these are not the only policy areas ripe for consideration, the examples described throughout the report reflect a variety of strategies for maximizing the health benefits of energy retrofits and other school facility upgrades.

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