Indoor Air Quality Symposium - symposium on the air quality in school buildings - Brief Article

School Administrator, Oct, 2001

Over 350 school administrators, teachers, nurses, parents, facilities personnel, city and county mangers and public health officials met in Washington, D.C., in August to learn how to create healthier indoor air quality, in school buildings.

The Indoor Air Quality Tools For Schools (TfS) National Symposium was sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and a number of national associations, including AASA, committed to improving indoor air quality in the nation's schools.

According to the federal government, an estimated 50 percent of the nation's schools have indoor air quality concerns. Nearly 1 in 13 school-aged child has asthma; poor indoor air quality is often cited as a contributing factor.

In 1996, the EPA developed the TfS kit, a free and easy-to-use reference to help schools identify; resolve and prevent indoor air quality problems. To date, more than 5,000 schools and school districts have used the kit to implement commonsense solutions for indoor air quality problems using little or no additional budget money.

At the symposium, schools from across the nation were honored for their successful implementation of the TfS kit, including nine districts whose superintendents are AASA members. More information on the symposium, the TfS kit and the AASA award winners is available at www.aasa.org.

AASA has just been awarded a 5-year, $1-million grant from the Centers for Disease Control to build the capacity of state and local health and education departments to reduce asthma among youth.