I was born & raised in the small towns around Pittsburgh, PA - right around when the steel industry started drying up, and the need to leave the streetlights on in the daytime to see through the factory smoke faded away with it. I always wondered if growing up in that valley had any connection to the respiratory & allergy problems I still deal with today.
So you can understand my concern when I discovered a study from USA Today about toxic air surrounding American schools.
Using the government's most up-to-date model for tracking toxic chemicals, USA TODAY spent eight months examining the impact of industrial pollution on the air outside schools across the nation. The model is a computer simulation that predicts the path of toxic chemicals released by thousands of companies.
They used this data (from 2005 emissions reports) to do a ranking of almost 128,000 schools by amount of pollution. The results disturbed me, and I think everyone should check them out.
The first thing I did was search for my old elementary school, found here...in the 6th percentile. Apparently on the playground I was breathing in such delightful things as acrylic acid, sulfuric acid, manganese, cadmium, and lead.
The part that shocked me the most about this is that this school (and the area I lived in) were extremely rural - it's been years since I've been out there but at the time all I recall in the surrounding area was a few cemetaries and a golf course or two. You could easily see all the stars at night. My entire basis for the idea of "clean air" was living out there, and it was full of carcinogens.
Then I checked my high school, in another town, which I will refrain from linking... THIRD percentile. From junior high on up, I was breathing such treats as even more manganese & sulfuric acid, nickel, and FORMALDEHYDE. Delicious.
What scares me the most about this is that my family lives less than a mile from this school. I walked home every day easily.
Of the people that lived in that house, 3 came down with cancer, 2 died of it, and 1 (myself) has allergies so severe that when tested, the doctor said it was one of the most extreme cases they had ever seen.
Now, I don't know for sure if any of this pollution is what caused my respiratory problems (although the constant sinus infections & allergy attacks coincidentally seemed to get better after leaving the area), or what killed my great-grandmother (brain tumor) or grandfather (lung cancer), or what threatened to take my grandmother (breast cancer). But it's still terrifying and disturbing. In my home county, rankings went from 1st-12th.
Most of the affected states are rust-belt kind of areas, but even places like Maine, the Dakotas, and Arizona have a few schools ranking in the 1st percentile.
So what do we do about it? Here's an excerpt from USA Today's Q&A page about the report:
Question: What do I do with this information?
Answer: The first step is to see whether the company that the government model indicates is responsible is 1) still operating; and 2) has reported its emissions correctly. Although the model is the government's most up-to-date gauge of industrial pollution, the emissions reports it uses come from 2005. That means some of the companies might have gone out of business or cut production. One way to check is to see whether that company reported emissions last year. Also, contact your local school district and ask officials what they know. They should be able to direct you to local environmental authorities who can tell you whether they have monitored the air nearby.
You can also contact environmental advocacy groups that might help you find relatively inexpensive ways to determine what's in the air. Groups such as Global Community Monitor work with local groups to develop ways to check air quality in their communities.
Question: Until I know for sure, should I pull my kids from school and put my house up for sale?
Answer: No, say environmental experts. Don't panic, but push for answers. Most of the chemicals that might be outside your school are in small enough quantities that they likely pose no immediate threats.
Question: Then why should I be concerned?
Answer: For many reasons. First, scientists aren't certain how specific chemicals affect children. Kids are particularly vulnerable because they're still growing and they breathe more air than adults, but safety standards are based largely on how chemicals affect adults in the workplace. Second, the same companies that may be responsible for the pollution sometimes have spills or accidents during which much larger amounts of toxic chemicals are released. The model does not account for those. Third, thousands of other, smaller businesses aren't obligated to report their emissions to the government. That means monitoring the air might be the only way to account for what they release. Fourth, if you don't push for answers, no one else might; laws in most states don't require school or environmental authorities to examine toxic chemicals in the air outside schools.
I think at the very least, this deserves looking into, especially if we are going to try to amp up industry to help with the financial crisis. According to the report, the pollution has gotten worse in the last 10 years. What can be done to turn this around the other way?
For those of you who looked at this and found your current or childhood area school was ranked high, have you or your children had any suspicious health troubles? All I have is anecdotal information about how half my childhood friends carried inhalers, but I'm wondering about others' experiences and if there is cause for concern.