The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 to protect human health and the environment. That same year, Congress passed the landmark Clean Air Act. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA officials worked to improve outdoor air quality in several ways. One of the most effective measures was imposing new emission standards on vehicle manufacturers. The Clean Air Act has been a major success story.

According to EPA officials, “new passenger vehicles are 98-99% cleaner for most tailpipe pollutants compared to the 1960s. Fuels are much cleaner–lead has been eliminated, and sulfur levels are more than 90% lower than they were prior to regulation. U.S. cities have much improved air quality, despite ever increasing population and increasing vehicle miles traveled.” Moreover, “standards have sparked technology innovation from industry.”

The quality of the nation’s outdoor air has significantly improved over the decades, and several organizations in the Tri-Valley focus on reducing outdoor pollution. But indoor air quality has not improved. Experts point out that indoor air quality, with a few exceptions, is largely unregulated in the United States. As a result, vulnerable populations such as school children are often exposed to indoor pollutants.

Poor Indoor Air Quality Is Health Hazard

EPA officials note that “Americans, on average, spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, where the concentrations of some pollutants are often two to five times higher than typical outdoor concentrations. People who are often most susceptible to the adverse effects of pollution–the very young, older adults, people with cardiovascular or respiratory disease–tend to spend even more time indoors.”

In short, poor indoor air quality is a health hazard. “Repeated exposure to poor indoor air quality has been proven to lead to respiratory diseases, heart disease, and cancer; exacerbate asthma symptoms; and increase student and teacher absenteeism, disrupting the learning process and student performance,” according to Aleyna Rentz and Aliza Rosen in an article for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“It's not something we should be ignoring,” according to Gigi Gronvall, PhD, an Associate Professor of Environmental Health and Engineering and a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland. She told Rentz and Rosen that “if you breathe poor air, you're not going to do as well, you're not going to think as well.”

Some organizations are working toward state laws to improve indoor air quality. Experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security worked with the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University in Phoenix to create the Model Indoor Air Quality Act, which was published in 2023. The Model Indoor Air Quality Act is a model law for state legislatures to consider for regulating indoor air quality in public buildings. Passage of such laws would not solve the problem nationally, but would be one step in promoting communal health.

SafeTraces, a Hacienda tenant, is a biotech company that provides a diagnostic and software platform to performance test heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems; air cleaners; and other ways of enabling buildings to have higher qualities of indoor air quality and energy efficiency. CEO Erik Malmstrom notes the critical nature of this issue. “Indoor air quality is incredibly important to people's health,” he says. “Unlike eating food or drinking water, which we do periodically over the course of the day, we're constantly breathing air. The quality of that air is really important for health outcomes. Breathing dirty air, whether it's dirty from pollution, dirty from wildfire particulates, dirty from other contaminants, or dirty from viruses, is incredibly harmful to human health and incredibly costly to society.”

Schools Need Higher Quality Indoor Air

Go Green Initiative Founder and CEO Jill Buck and her staff have devoted more than 20 years to working with schools to improve indoor environmental conditions, conserve national resources, and reduce environmental impacts. The facts are clear. “Indoor air quality impacts children's short term and long term health, and it also impacts their ability to learn. We have known this for decades,” she says. “Children's bodies are more susceptible to the toxins that can be in indoor air. And yet again, there are no legal protections, no requirements on the part of school districts to monitor these toxins that can be found in indoor air.”

The Pleasanton-based environmental nonprofit is working to improve indoor air quality through a pioneering national project funded by the EPA. In October, the nonprofit was awarded a $7.9 million grant to address air pollution inside schools. It was one of five grantees chosen by the agency “to monitor and reduce indoor air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions at schools from kindergarten through grade 12 in low-income, disadvantaged, and Tribal communities,” according to the EPA announcement.

Agency officials noted that the Go Green would “partner with the National School Boards Association and their state affiliates to provide education and training for school staff, administrators, and school board officials involved in improving school indoor air quality and reducing climate pollution across all 50 states, as well as providing targeted, intensive technical assistance and capacity building in Tribal and low-income school districts in all 10 EPA regions.”

“This is the first big investment that the federal government has made in improving indoor air quality in schools,” Buck notes. “One of the things that the EPA knows is that indoor air quality in schools that are low income or in tribal communities tends to be even worse than indoor air quality in other communities. The EPA wanted to see proposals that would increase dramatically the number of school districts that are managing their indoor air quality, and we came up with a plan to do that.”

Go Green is partnering with SafeTraces on this project. “Our partnership with Go Green Initiative is focused on making school facilities healthier and greener, and doing so in an inclusive way with key stakeholders,” notes Malmstrom. “Not just facilities managers but also administrators, the Boards of Education, and, most importantly, students, teachers, families, and people in the community. That's where Jill and her organization are national leaders.”

This EPA-funded project is an important step in addressing indoor air quality at schools. But more action is needed for lasting progress. “First, we need public policy to regulate indoor air quality in schools,” Buck says. “Second, leaders take initiative. So I'm asking school district leaders across the country to take the initiative to improve indoor air quality in schools, even in the absence of a mandate. Third, I'm asking adults everywhere to take responsibility for this issue. Children are at the mercy of the adults around them. They are powerless to protect themselves. I'm asking adults to get involved and take responsibility for protecting children from this harm.”

As part of its work on this project, Go Green will create free, online training that will mirror what the nonprofit is doing for the selected 40 school districts. Officials of any school district in the U.S. will be able to take the online training and learn the steps needed to monitor and improve the indoor quality of the schools in their districts. When completed, the training will be a major new resource for school officials nationwide.

“All of our work, everything we're able to accomplish, is accomplished through brilliant staff members,” Buck points out. “We can't do the work that we do with volunteers. Our work is too technical and too involved. The only way that we're able to do the work that we do and expand to serve more school districts is by hiring staff. The only thing that limits us from doing more for school districts here in the Tri-Valley and across the country is staffing. Any financial support that your readers can give to help bring on and deploy more staff members is appreciated.”

Malmstrom applauds the work being done by Go Green. “Schools should be prioritized for indoor air quality improvements,” he says. “It takes amazing leaders and advocates like Jill to keep banging the drum and work through significant obstacles and frustrations to ultimately ensure kids are breathing clean air.”

For more information about the Go Green Initiative, please visit www.gogreeninitiative.org.

For more information about SafeTraces, please visit www.safetraces.com.

For more information about indoor air quality issues, please visit www.epa.gov/report-environment/indoor-air-quality.
 
For more information about the Model Indoor Air Quality Act, please visit www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/research-projects/indoor-air-quality/model-clean-indoor-air-act.

For more information about groups working to preserve and improve outdoor air quality in the Tri-Valley, please visit www.hacienda.org/news-events/hacienda-online/pulse/2023/feature-stories/tri-valley-groups-work-protect-and-improve-air-quality.