Statement of Claire Barnett,
Executive Director,
Healthy Schools Network
Attachment to Testimony at :
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ddc/html/highperf.html
Good morning. Thank you Senator Jeffords, Senator
Smith, and other members of the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee
for holding this historic hearing on the greening of our children's workplaces.
There are several questions I hope you will focus on today.
·
What
do we know about environmental hazards in schools?
·
What
do we know about how these affect child health and learning?
·
What
systems are in place to ensure that the opportunities to protect child health
and learning and to protect the environment are accessible and implemented?
·
What
roles should US EPA play an improving school facilities and child health and
learning?
The questions are not simple: effective federal
responses to the multiple environment and environmental health questions facing
all children and their schools requires integrating the expertise and efforts
of several disciplines and agencies at the federal level and within the
states.
My name is Claire L. Barnett. My husband and I moved
from Westport-on-Lake-Champlain, NY to Saratoga Springs, NY where we now reside
a few years ago. I am Executive Director of Healthy
Schools Network, Inc., a national environmental health research,
information, and advocacy organization; a former PTO President from upstate New
York; the parent of a health-impaired child once in special education; and
today, the representative the parents of 50 million children and the 5 million
school personnel-- such as those with
me here today, Joellen Lawson (CT), Jenna Orkin, (NY), Veronica Carella (MD),
Grayling White (TN), Judy Sazonski (CT), and Robin Starinieri (VA) whose lives
have been impacted by the poor conditions of schools and the lack of any
comprehensive system to protect children and adults from indoor environmental
hazards at school.
The national Coalition
for Healthier Schools is comprised of over 75 national, state, and local
parent, public health, environment, and education groups and is dedicated to
assuring that all children and personnel have schools that are environmentally
healthy. Several representatives of organizations in the Coalition are here
today whom I wish to recognize: American Public Health Association, Beyond
Pesticides, Children's Environmental Health Network, National Education
Association, and National Environmental Education and Training Foundation. The Coalition helped secure $1.2 billion in federal funds for school repairs in
the fall of 2000 and successfully campaigned last year for the "Healthy
and High Performance Schools" provisions now in the "No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001".
Healthy Schools Network also helped organize
countless local healthy schools groups and coalitions in several states. It is
through this rapidly growing network of concerned groups that our Healthy Schools/Healthy/Kids Clearinghouse
noticed the outbreak of school rashes last year and with national partners
asked the federal Centers for Disease Control/National Center for Environmental
Health to launch an investigation and to report to Congress (correspondence
attached).
Applying our skills in New York State, Healthy
Schools Network recently completed a two year grant that funded intensive
outreach to 225 low-income schools on greening existing schools, including
healthier cleaning and pest control, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) protocols, and
health & safety committees that are required under state regulations. After
the World Trade Center attacks, we provided extensive help to the communities
and Parent Associations of the seven public Ground Zero Schools. Our
commissioned research report on their experience, Schools of Ground Zero: Early Lessons Learned in Child Environmental
Health, is now a book co-published with the American Public Health
Association that I will provide to the Committee for its records.
The lesson
from all of our work and the book: "...N
is for No System to Protect Children."
CHILDREN,
SCHOOLS, AND ENVIRONMENT
Americans spend 85-90% of their time indoors. For
the 55 million children and adults in 115,000 schools today, Tuesday, October
1, 2002, the first day of Child Health Month, they know that schools are more
densely occupied and less well maintained than commercial offices. The US
General Accounting Office reported in 1995 that over 14 million children were
in schools that threatened their health. Environmental factors included indoor
air pollution, lighting and plumbing deficiencies, and ventilation problems,
problems that don’t away on their own. US EPA states that indoor air pollution
is one of the top five hazards to human health. The American Society of Civil
Engineers reports that our schools are in worse condition than any other
infrastructure including prisons (attached, American Society of Civil
Engineer’s 2001 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure/Schools) showing that
65% of schools in the District have bad plumb, and 52% of schools in Alaska and
47% in New Hampshire have air pollution. While enrollments have grown, schools
have decayed and renovations and new construction have not kept pace;
meanwhile, schools everywhere are enrolling more and more children with special
needs: asthma, attention deficit, autism, severe allergies, learning disabilities.
Seventeen percent of children under 18 have been diagnosed with one or more
developmental disabilities. These
disabilities include Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and autism
and are the result of complex interactions among genetic, environmental and
societal factors that impact children during vulnerable periods of development. These children especially do not
thrive in the polluted indoors.
As the federal executive order on child
environmental health reauthorized by President Bush reaffirms, children are
more vulnerable to environmental hazards that adults. Our challenge is how do we create greener buildings for
children-- from existing building, and with renovations and all-new buildings?
What do we
know about environmental hazards at school
and the
effects on child health and learning?
A is for
asthma and air quality.
Children are especially susceptible to air
pollutants. Children have increased
oxygen needs compared to adults, they breathe more rapidly and, therefore,
inhale more pollutants per pound of body weight than adults. They often spend more time engaged in
vigorous outdoor activities than adults.
·
Asthma
is the leading cause of school absenteeism due to a chronic illness. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency estimated that American children lost 17
million school days in 1997 due to the disease, and that parents lost 5 million
work days in order to care for their children with asthma-related illness.
Nearly 1 in 13 school-age children has asthma (CEHN).
·
Major
indoor triggers of asthma attacks include irritants such as paints, cleaning
agents, pesticides, perfumes, sealants, plastics, adhesives, insulation
materials, animal and insect allergens, environmental tobacco smoke, and molds
(CEHN). All of these can be found in schools, including ‘huffable’ spray
paints, markers, and fixatives.
Schools that are poorly designed or constructed, or
in poor condition, or that have inadequate maintenance, inadequate food storage
or garbage and recycling areas, will be subject to pest infestations. Pests
like what we like: food, water, and safe place to nest. It is better for the
building, healthier for occupants, and cheaper to keep pests out of schools
than to continuously apply toxic pesticides. According to Beyond Pesticides, to
protect children from unsafe, unhealthy practices, more than thirty states have
placed limits on school pesticide uses.
Pest-proofing of a facility during renovations or repairs is cost
effective step to promoting an environmentally healthy school.
·
Information about on the amount of pesticides used in
the nation’s 110,000 public schools is not available. The Federal government does not collect such data, and, as of
1999, only two states collected data on pesticide use in a manner that allows
for identifying use in school facilities. From 1993 through 1996, about 2,300
pesticide-related exposures involving individuals at schools were reported,
according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers (although these
data are not believed to be complete) (CEHN).
Bioaerosols, specifically,
molds in
schools is new 'hot' issue but hardly a new issue historically. Molds are
everywhere, indoors and out and grow by digesting what they sit on. There is no
such thing as a mold-free environment. There are thousands of different kinds
of molds; different individuals may react differently, and some not at all.
Testing for molds is unreliable, and since most are capable of causing illness
and eat way at building elements, testing is more beneficial to the vendors
than to schools. The message is prevention is cheaper than remediation: reduce
humidity, stop leaks, respond promptly to spills and flooding, and take health
complaints seriously the first time.
C is for
children and chemicals.
Chemical toxicants and biological agents in the
classroom, on the playground, in the science lab, or in other school facilities
can lead to health risks and adverse learning conditions. They can affect many different body systems
and impact health, learning, productivity, and self esteem.
One very effective way to improve indoor
environments is to use less-hazardous, or environmentally preferable purchasing
(EPP) to buy products for cleaning and
repair work. EPP applied to custodial product purchasing can result in a
zero-cost, environmental change. The basic steps to healthier cleaning include
keeping dirt and grime out of the building, then by consulting the product
labels and Material Safety Data Sheets, determining which products have the
least hazardous properties (HSN).
Other than lead, asbestos and radon, the
Federal government has not instituted requirements or guidelines that would
protect children from the same chemical exposures that require employee
notification and other worker protections.
Schools are places where children and elemental mercury
may come together via thermometers and barometers, in laboratory courses or
“show-and-tell.” Mercury can also be
released through broken fluorescent light tubes or thermostats.
·
Mercury
is a potent neurotoxicant and children are particularly susceptible to
mercury’s dangers. Mercury interferes
with brain development and more easily passes into the brains of fetuses and young
children than into the brains of adults (CEHN).
·
Mercury-containing
products or spills must be properly handled.
Even small mercury spills require specialists. Improper clean-up of a mercury release, such as vacuuming up the
mercury from a broken thermometer, will spread the mercury into the air (CEHN).
Other sources of chemicals in schools will
include science laboratories, vocational education classrooms, art rooms, copy
shops, computer rooms, and custodial storage areas. There is no system that attempts
to assess the types of chemicals used in schools, including pesticides. Federal Executive Order 13101 on
Environmentally Preferable Purchasing has not been systematically extended to
schools to assist them with setting purchasing specifications that will drive
out toxic products that may contribute to employee injury, storage problems,
disposal problems, air pollution, and student illness or health risks. The
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) studied evacuations
from educational facilities, often caused by chemical spills or releases,
and found-- not surprisingly that the evacuees and victims from schools are
younger and more numerous than those from other institutional settings. The
most common substances involved were mercury, then tearing agents, hydrochloric
acid, chlorine, ethlene glycol, and formaldehyde. There was no estimate
of the cost to health, learning, or school administration.
Lead comes with old infrastructure and will be found in
paint dust and chips, window sills, the grounds next to an old building,
grounds near highways and bridges, and in water. Lead is a potent neurotoxin.
Exposure to lead can cause a variety of health effects, including delays
in normal physical and mental development in children, deficits in attention
span, hearing, and learning disabilities of children, as well as problems with
impulsivity and aggression. Long-term
effects can include stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. (AECLP, CEHN) Los Angeles
Unified SD flags old classrooms for high priority clean-ups that have flaking
paint or paint chips on the floors. New
York State requires that areas to be disturbed during renovation be tested for
lead.
·
According
to a report on the condition of the
nation’s school facilities by the U. S. General Accounting Office, schools built before 1980 were painted with lead
paint.
·
Children
may also be exposed to lead through drinking water that has elevated
concentrations from lead plumbing materials.
Lead contamination in drinking water occurs from corrosion of lead
pipes, lead soldered plumbing and storage tanks and lead-containing plumbing
fixtures, and it cannot be directly detected or removed by the water system
(AECLP, CEHN).
·
Some
support was provided to schools through the Lead Contamination Control Act of
1988 to identify and correct lead-in-drinking-water problems at schools,
especially water coolers with lead-lined tanks (CEHN).
·
Rifle
ranges at school are another potential source of lead contamination (HSN).
N is for no
system to protect children.
Twenty-six states have adopted federal Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) standards for public employees, and thus these standards may well protect school employees. Although students may indirectly benefit from the OSHA and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) activities that cover school employees, OSHA and NIOSH have no jurisdiction for investigating the health impact of exposure to students. Parents of the Schools of Ground Zero learned this the hard way, as did the parents here with me today. Employees may call in NIOSH to evaluate workplace conditions. None has ever evaluated students who outnumber adults in school by an average of 10 or more to one. Two studies on employees of school in Lower Manhattan found health effects from indoor pollutants six months after the World Trade Center attacks. No similar studies are underway on the 3,000 students who returned to their 'workplace' in early October.
"N
Is for No System to Protect Children."
Not one of the workplace standards
have been set to protect children who are compelled to be in school, and none
can be invoked by children or their parents. Parents cannot take their children
to an occupational health clinic; they have no bargaining rights; they are not
in school every day; schools may not reveal hazards and they have no system
that provides a right to know; PTA's
and PTO's are voluntary groups have no institutional history or capacity to
conduct on site environmental health or workplace inspections.
HSN
Numerous studies conclude that there is an explicit
relationship between the physical characteristics of school buildings and
educational outcomes. To this end,
research shows us that better quality buildings produce better student results
on standardized tests (Rebuild American's Schools). For example:
· Four
recent studies found higher test scores for students learning in better
buildings and lower scores for students learning in substandard buildings. One of the more recent of these studies
showed a difference in student test scores ranging from 5 to 17 percentile
points (RAS).
· Another
study in DC Public Schools showed that students in school buildings in poor
condition scored 11% below students in buildings that were in excellent
condition on standardized achievement tests (RAS).
Greener buildings are a return
to 'the basics' of fresh air and sunshine in schools: fund and implement the
Healthy and High Performance Schools to help address the environmental needs of
decayed schools. It is set up to help schools with design, engineering, and
materials selection during major renovations, financed by state agencies. The
opportunity to merge national environmental and building sciences information
and technical assistance with state energy, education, and environment
programs, is unique, timely, and necessary.
Volunteer local school boards simply are not equipped to do this
alone.
The US Department of Energy's
studies on schools and findings that schools could save 25% or $1.5 billion in
energy with modest improvements. Other organizations have found school saving
up to 50% on energy with new equipment and human behavior changes. Daylighting
will yield higher test scores and save energy (HSN). We also refer you to the excellent green design guidelines for
public buildings and schools by the New York City Department of Design and
Construction that also offers in-depth assistance on materials selections.
While there is
federal legislation and regulatory authority at US EPA on outdoor air, there
are virtually no laws or enforceable regulations on indoor air quality (IAQ).
Yet air pollution is air pollution indoors or out. Priority
research needs for the field of adult
workers was just published (Am
J Public Health) that outlined an extensive NIOSH/National Occupational
Research Agenda committee process. The process did not consider a child research
agenda and it unclear if the longitudinal National Children’s Study will
undertake parallel research in this area. In fact
no state has a system to collect or report student illness or injury, so
improving on research means starting from square one. There was no baseline
data on children's illnesses during the recent school rash outbreak.
The
New London, TX School Disaster.
On
March 18, 1937 a gas explosion killed nearly 300 students, teachers, and visitors.
The investigation revelaed a litany of false savings, negligence in the design,
installation, and maintenance of the heating system, weakness in ventilation,
and refusal to listen to the complaints of school occupants. Only one of the
many recommendations were ever put in place-- the addition of an odorant to
natural gas.
Healthy Kids: The Key to Basics
Worse, for the
parents of affected children and for school personnel, no school can prove it
has acceptable indoor air by producing a test result. Indeed some research
suggests that human sensors (the building occupants) are more sensitive than
testing equipment and provide continuous on-site feed-back. We recommend to you the Indoor Air 2002
conference proceedings and bibliography that we will submit separately to
Committee staff. Indoor air measures can be expensive and must be done under
actual operating conditions, with the school fully loaded. Contaminants present
can include asbestos, lead, mold spores, pet danders, volatile organic compounds,
fumes from uncontrolled renovation projects and cleaning products,
instructional supplies, pest/pesticide and their residues, foods, garbage, or
the not-so-subtle scents of middle-schoolers in an overheated building. There
are some standards for individual contaminants of indoor air set for adult
occupational exposures; California has set comprehensive standards for VOC's.
US EPA/Indoor
Environments Division (IED) is to be commended for having a strong, voluntary
program for schools, the "IAQ Tools for Schools" program. In addition
to setting quotas for the regional offices and giving mini-grant to schools to
spur implementation, EPA also developed educational materials, such as
"Student Performance and School Air Quality” that indicates even healthy adults
placed in a polluted indoor environment can have a 3-7% decline in speed and
accuracy in keyboarding. There are no such studies on children, although I
am sure every Committee Member would unanimously agree that every school
principal wants a 3-7% gain in standardized test scores.
TfS implementation remains elusive, as
it does with many voluntary school programs. At the Indoor Air conference in
Monterey, US EPA/Region 2 staff presented its work in New Jersey: it has been
able to initiate the voluntary program in only one percent of the schools in
the state. TfS is sadly
underutilized, and with a few exceptions, has not been well integrated into
ongoing school facility work or state aid systems.
Implementation of Healthy and
High Performance Schools provisions that give states funding and information
for school renovations would greatly assist IAQ problems. Since implementation
is scant and children are required to be in schools
and schools have known air pollution problems, the real question is why is TfS is only a voluntary program. The difficulty in defining what TfS implementation consists of is part
of the problem; another is the basic difficulty in extracting timely and
accurate information from schools about environmental conditions and child
health; and finally, the need for substantial increases in research into indoor
air is also required.
Drugging Canaries
Asthma
medications may have side effects, such as tremors, nausea, headache anxiety.
Yet, some children now need on-site nebulizers just to attend polluted schools.
On physician orders, some parents have kept children home. Some schools have
quickly addressed the situation by providing home instruction, tutoring,
building improvements, or alternative placements, while other parents are home
schooling. We have also had calls from parents who tell us they have seriously
ill children, have schools ignoring physician letters, and also report their
schools have threatened to report them for child neglect based on long
absences.
HSN
Needless to say,
as Committee members and staff are aware, schools receiving any federal aid are
required under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to provide
accessible facilities. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA), schools must provide a free, appropriate public education to all
children in the least restrictive setting.
The Outbreak
of School Rashes.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) launched a federal
study of the outbreak of rashes that affected over 1,000 children in 27 states.
Findings include the usual childhood diseases, eczema, applied chemicals
and renovation dusts, and rashes of unknown origins. Despite premature
media reports that attempted to paint this as 'female hysteria', the rashes
appeared on both boys and girls, in different schools and in different
classrooms, and in different states on the same day. At least one school in the state of Washington refused to allow
the state to conduct an environmental investigation on site. In surveying
members of the NYS Association of School Nurses two years ago, HSN learned that
nurses are not allowed to tell parents about school conditions and that 71% of
206 respondents knew children who were affected (HSN).
This is not a system set up to protect children and
to determine what the exposures and results of those exposures are. We encourage Congress to hear from CDC/NCEH
and other agencies on how school environmental investigations should be carried
out.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The root problem is that there is no system to
protect children, and no system to deliver or enforce a consistent message with
local schools. We believe that it is
beyond the jurisdiction of this Committee acting alone to establish such a
system, but we would urge future this Committee and others to explore these
issues and possible solutions in depth with the array of federal agencies.
1. Fund and
implement the Healthy and High Performance Schools provisions of the Leave No
Child Behind Act, expanding the USD Education's ability to:
·
participate in the National
Children's Study;
·
participate in the
Interagency Task Force on Risks to Child Health;
·
conduct joint research with
other federal agencies on how environmental hazards at school affect health and
learning;
·
provide incentives and
information to the states to leverage their own 'high performance schools'
programs.
2.
Institutionalize the
National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities
and cross-link it to the other federal agencies' school environmental programs;
3. Expand US Environmental Protection
Agency's schools programs, establishing it as an agency priority, including:
·
research on indoor air at
school and impacts on child health and learning;
·
evaluating IAQ Tools for
Schools and other school programs for their effectiveness at reducing
children's toxic exposures and reducing absenteeism, or providing disability
access to buildings;
·
strengthening the EPA
regional office's work with state agencies and advocacy organizations so that IAQ
Tools for Schools and other programs are integrated into state agency efforts;
·
expand US EPA's grants to
the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units, jointly funded with the
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry;
·
require US EPA and other
federal agencies, in cooperation with environmental health and education
groups, to develop best practice policies for school district maintenance and
repair, consistent with 'greening' the existing infrastructure for the
protection of child health. This should
include methods and examples for applying the federal executive order on
Environmentally Preferable Purchasing to school supplies and maintenance
products.
5. Pass the federal School Environmental
Protection Act (SEPA, HR 111 and HR 3275/S 1716 in the 106th Congress) that
will have the effect of making schools 'pest-proof' their buildings and thus
reduce their reliance on the routine use of highly toxic chemicals.
6.
Fund school repairs and
construction, directing a federal grant program at high needs schools and offer
tax credits to subsidize the interest on school construction bonds used for
repairs, renovations, and new construction.
ORGANIZATIONAL
SOURCES AND ABREVIATIONS IN THE TEXT:
AECLP,
Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning
CEHN, Children’s Environmental Health Network
HSN, Healthy Schools Network
RAS, Rebuild America’s Schools Coalition