Imperial Valley Asthma Coalition
The Imperial Valley Asthma Coalition has made great strides over the past year in implementing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools project, an intervention that aims to decrease asthma triggers and improve air quality in schools. This has been the cornerstone of the work organized and carried out by coalition volunteers to raise awareness among local residents. Imperial County continues to report the highest childhood asthma hospitalization rate of all counties in California.
What began as a pilot project in two elementary schools has since been expanded over the past year to include all schools in the Calexico Unified School District. In 2006, Tools for Schools is scheduled to be introduced to schools in other districts across the Imperial Valley. In total to date, the project has been introduced in six elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school.
The project’s success is due in part to the support and positive response by the staff and administrators at the pilot schools in the city of Calexico, located adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It raised everyone’s awareness,” says Georgina Sanchez, former principal of Blanche Charles Elementary School, one of the pilot schools. “We know we live in a community with a lot of dust.”
A lot of dust generated by agriculture, dirt roads in rural areas, and fallow fields. But dust is not the only asthma trigger in the community that shares an air basin with Mexicali, a megapolis in neighboring Mexico. Emissions from Mexicali’s power plant and factories, truck and car exhaust from both sides of the border, and pollen, pesticides and smoke from burning in the agricultural fields also contribute to Imperial Valley’s poor air quality.
In 2003 and 2004, the Coalition conducted indoor air quality assessments at Blanche Charles and Rockwood elementary schools in Calexico, and provided information about ways to reduce asthma triggers to parents and staff. After the assessments were completed and the data analyzed, Coalition members conducted informational presentations for school staff regarding the findings and recommendations for ways to improve air quality at the schools.
Principal Sanchez believes increased staff awareness and the improvements that followed the assessments had an impact on the overall air quality at Blanche Charles school.
“By my staff having good air quality translated to student achievement,” she said. “For students, it meant healthy air to breathe.”
After the findings were reported, the school instituted a “buddy system” to check and ensure that classroom doors, in particular in the portable classrooms where air quality was the poorest, are kept open one to two days per week. Maintenance staff was asked to check those units and adjust thermostats as needed.
Another issue identified through the assessment was the problem of vehicles idling in front of the school. Now deliveries are made earlier in the day when students are not present, according to Ms. Sanchez.
The school assigned a site administrator to follow up and ensure that these and other recommendations are implemented at the school.
Ms. Sanchez encourages other schools to participate in the Tools for Schools project. “Every school should implement this project since there is no cost.”
As a result of that support, all other schools in the Calexico Unified School District agreed to participate. Since then, the Coalition has modified the survey instruments so that they could easily be self-administered. The Coalition’s goal is that once the initial assessments are completed by Coalition volunteers, teachers and other school staff will be able to continue to use them on their own to reduce or eliminate triggers and improve indoor air quality.
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