Protecting Your Children from Common Allergens

Indoor Air Quality in Your Child's School. Despite all your efforts to keep your child's asthma under control at home, it persists. Well, have you checked her classroom? That moldy carpet or dusty bookshelf could be a major problem. Increasing enrollment and declining funds for school maintenance have only made indoor air quality problems at schools worse.

So what's a parent to do?

Plenty.

A good place to start is with the Environmental Protection Agency's Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Kit. Available online at http://www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/toolkit.html, it provides schools (and parents) with a practical, low-cost plan to improve indoor air problems.

The plan offers checklists to ensure common-sense steps are followed. These include regular dusting, checking ceilings and walls for leaks and keeping animal cages away from supply and return vents. Simply insuring that heating and air conditioning systems (HVAC) are properly cleaned and maintained can make a vast difference in indoor air quality, as can using HEPA filters in vacuum cleaners and HVAC systems.

Other changes schools can make include:

• More classroom storage areas for papers and projects so they don't spill out across the room.
• Linoleum instead of carpet on the floors.
• Easy-to-access filters and grillwork that can be cleaned.
• Large mats at entry areas to trap outdoor dirt that can be hosed off.

The Healthy Schools Network, a nonprofit organization based in Albany, NY, that works to build awareness of children's environmental health needs, points to the following as signs a school may have indoor environmental problems:

• The roof leaks.
• The building is new or newly renovated and still smells like paint, varnish, or glue.
• Your child has health or learning problems only in that building.
• Building maintenance and repairs costs are often cut at budget time.
• The building smells damp or musty, or has been flooded.
• The building and grounds are routinely treated with pesticides.