2008.12.10
What are your kids breathing at school?
If you're thinking the answer is bus exhaust, that smell from the cafeteria on fish stick day, second-hand smoke or maybe pot, you've got some other things to consider, according to USA Today.
The national newspaper has released a special report called "The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America's Schools," which documents air quality around 128,000 public, private and parochial schools. You can search the newspaper's database to see how your school ranks. Enter the name of a specific school, search by your locality, or an entire state. Results are mapped.
And, if you're kids go to a school in Dublin, Va., or the Raleigh Court/Virginia Heights area of Roanoke, prepare to be disturbed.
Four Dublin schools, including two elementary schools, are in the top percentile nationally on USA Today's list. Just 174 schools nationally have dirtier air than Newbern Elementary School, which has air polluted by Findlay Industries, TMD Friction and Volvo Trucks in Dublin, plus Radfords' Army Ammution Plant and Intermet Foundry.
The ammunition plant, by its own reporting, is the biggest single polluter in the state when it comes to toxic chemicals released into the environment. Search the data on Virginia industries here.
The most offensive chemical in the air at Newbern, according to the report, is diisocyanates, which can cause serious and even fatal respiratory issues, including asthma.
In Roanoke, Woodrow Wilson Middle School on Carter Road is in second percentile of all schools in the database. Just 912 schools have worse air quality, according to USA Today's research.
Virginia Heights Elementary School is also in the second percentile, with 1,599 schools ahead of it.
The companies producing the polluted air around the schools include nearby Roanoke Electric Steel, Akzo Nobel Coatings and Associated Asphalt, which are within a few miles of the schools, but also the U.S. Army Radford Army Ammunition Plant and Troutville's Roanoke Cement.
About 90 percent of the toxic stuff in the air around those schools is manganese and manganese compounds, according to the USA Today data. The chemical is used in pesticides and batteries, and overexposure for long periods can cause problems of the central nervous system, kidneys and liver, and lead to mental and emotional disturbances and physical clumsiness, according to the report. Children are especially susceptible.
USA Today pulled the information together using data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Environmental Protection Agency, and partnered with researchers from the University of Massachussetts-Amherst's Poltical Economy Research Institute on the report. A detailed description of the research methodology is on the website.
I have to confess, of all the things I worry about when I send my daughters off to school, manganese and diisocyanates are not among them. At this point, I don't know whether to trust this data or not. I don't know how alarmed to be.
I know what to do with most threats to my girls, but what can you do about this kind?
