Clean indoor air key to keeping students safe

One of the phrases Camas School District voters may hear more of as the district goes out for replacement levies in the February 2024 special election, is “Safe, Warm and Dry.”
The phrase is supposed to convey the many benefits afforded by the district’s capital levy, which pays for things like school boiler and roof replacements and speaks to the heart of what we all want for our community’s children: to keep them safe from harm and comfortable in their school facilities. 

As we enter what is predicted to be yet another rough season of respiratory illnesses — including a predicted surge of a new COVID variant known as BA.2.86 — and hear stories of Chinese hospitals overrun with pediatric patients suffering from “undiagnosed pneumonia,” we can’t help thinking that air quality needs to be one of the bullet points in any conversation about how we might keep Camas-Washougal students safe now and into the future. 

As studies have shown, schools that focused on indoor air quality — by ventilating, filtering and treating the indoor air using methods that included everything from opening windows and holding more outdoor classes to turning on HEPA filters and setting up germ-killing upper-room UV lights — had far fewer COVID outbreaks during the height of the pandemic and have reported fewer absences since schools fully reopened and did away with masking requirements.

And even if the thought of children repeatedly catching COVID — an illness that has already infected at least 91% of American children and that is now known to cause long-term, possibly incurable, health problems for a certain number of previously healthy people, with risks of “long COVID” present with each new infection — doesn’t make the general public stand up and demand better air quality in our school buildings, we can’t ignore other problems that accompany unhealthy indoor air quality. As the federal Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center points out: “Poor indoor air quality can affect children’s breathing, learning and development,” and “young children are sensitive to poor air quality, especially children with respiratory illnesses or chronic health conditions such as asthma.”

“Improving ventilation and filtration can help protect people from getting infected with viruses and spreading them (as) viral particles spread between people more easily indoors than outdoors,” the ECLKC adds. 

Having robust air quality systems inside our schools can not only protect our children — and school staff — from picking up and spreading every airborne virus out there, but can also help protect these valuable community members from harm caused by air pollution and wildfire smoke.   

“Exposure to indoor air pollutants poses a serious health threat,” the Rocky Mountain Institute reported in its October 2023 report on the need for stronger indoor air quality guidelines in the U.S. “We spend almost 90% of our time indoors, where pollutant concentrations may be two to five times higher than outdoors. Behavioral shifts since the COVID-19 pandemic have further increased time spent indoors, and many of those behavioral changes have been sustained. Changes to outdoor environmental conditions due to climate change are projected to cause additional adverse effects to indoor air quality that will harm human health, including increased indoor heat stress, mold, ozone exposure and wildfire smoke exposure.”

If there is one positive that could come from the COVID pandemic, it should be a greater understanding of just how harmful indoor air can be for our health and wellbeing. As Camas school leaders delve into how a replacement levy can continue to keep Camas students “safe, warm and dry,” we hope they will consider clean air quality measures, including methods that would allow schools to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s guideline that classrooms have at least six air changes — introducing fresh, outdoor air into the classroom — per hour.