Note to School Officials and Others Interested in Indoor Air Quality in Schools.
Good indoor air quality contributes to a favorable learning environment for students, productivity for teachers and staff,and a sense of comfort, health, and well-being or all school occupants. These combine to assist a school in its core mission -- educating children.
Rising energy costs encourage the development of tighter buildings and a reduction in the amount of outdoor air brought into schools for ventilation. In addition, school operating and maintenance budgets are often reduced to minimal levels.
These actions, combined with the variety of indoor sources of contaminants building materials, furnishings, cleaning agents, pesticides, printing and copying devices, combustion appliances, tobacco products, allergens, fungi, molds, bacteria, viruses, radon, and lead can reduce the quality of the indoor environment, and consequently affect the health and well-being of school occupants.
- The number of children with asthma increased by 60% during the 1980s, and poor indoor air quality can trigger asthmatic episodes.
In addition to myriad health consequences, poor air quality is becoming increasingly costly for schools due to the potential for expensive investigation and hasty solutions during a major indoor air problem, higher heating and cooling costs, damage to physical building structure and mechanical equipment, and higher liability. For these reasons, air quality in schools is of particular concern.
Proper maintenance of indoor air is more than a "quality" issue, it encompasses safety and stewardship of the taxpayer's investment. In response to this era of tight school budgets, this guidance is designed to allow you to prevent and solve the majority of indoor air problems with minimal cost and involvement.
You can accomplish this using current school staff to perform a limited and well-defined set of basic operations and maintenance activities. The commitment to address indoor air quality (IAQ) starts at the highest level of administration. To be most effective, the school must identify and the administration must empower an IAQ Coordinator (page 5). The school should also ensure that all school staff are motivated to carry out the problem-solving and problem prevention guidance provided in this Kit.
