Our kids deserve clean air to breathe

"A lot of schools in Los Angeles installed air filters, and something strange happened: Test scores went up. By a lot. And the gains were sustained in the subsequent year rather than fading away. 

"The impact of the air filters is strikingly large given what a simple change we’re talking about. The school district didn’t reengineer the school buildings or make dramatic education reforms; they just installed $700 commercially available filters that you could plug into any room in the country. But it’s consistent with a growing literature on the cognitive impact of air pollution, which finds that everyone from chess players to baseball umpires to workers in a pear-packing factory suffer deteriorations in performance when the air is more polluted. 

"If Gilraine’s result holds up to further scrutiny, he will have identified what’s probably the single most cost-effective education policy intervention."

Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits

$1,000 can raise a class’s test scores by as much as cutting class size by a third.

 

Ventilation may also be the most important modification of classrooms to reduce the risk of airborne disease transmission. By improving ventilation & giving children clean air to breathe, we both cease damaging their development with polluted air and reduce their risk of illness.

 

"Models show that in a typical, closed classroom, about 3% of the air students inhale was exhaled by somebody else in the room. To be a 'healthy room,' the air should be exchanged 6/hr, running thru a filtration system."

For schools, ventilation may be a bigger issue than spacing to prevent COVID-19’s spread

The American Rescue Plan (the Biden Plan) includes $160billion for school safety improvements so that more schools can reopen. Better classroom ventilation is something we can do now, driven by the urgency of the pandemic, that could pay off for our children for years to come.

 

I'm thinking of a leaky roof, that the homeowner didn't want to pay to fix, though they could afford it. Mold grows in the attic, the ceiling is being ruined. But a severe windstorm rips off most of the roof and it *has* to be fixed. And the house is better off–for years to come.

We should have fixed ventilation in classrooms years ago, as soon as we knew how damaging breathing polluted indoor air was to children. We could afford it. Just like that homeowner. But now at least, let's get serious about it.