Remember the “Gold Star System” in school? Teachers would award gold star stickers to students who completed a task or behaved well. We think the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deserves a gleaming gold star for its IAQ Tools for Schools Program. With a mission to reduce exposure to indoor environmental contaminants, Tools for Schools has been implemented in hundreds of schools across the nation since 1995. The constantly updated Tools for Schools Action Kit shows schools how to carry out a practical, low-cost IAQ management plan with best practices, industry guidelines and sample policies. The great thing about the program is that everyone at a school can participate – from administrative staff, food service and facility mangers, to students, teachers and parents.

As our recent classroom IAQ study indicates, occupied classrooms are especially prone to high concentrations of harmful volatile organic compounds.  If left unchecked, these VOCs can cause a variety of physical ailments. Common symptoms are eye irritation, headache, drowsiness or dizziness. Not many school districts realize that an increase in ventilation of just one-cubic-foot per minute can decrease absentee rates by up to two percent. The good news is that there are intelligent air quality (iAQ) monitors that can detect VOCs. Plus, monitors like AppliedSensor’s iAQ-2000 actually save money on energy costs because they can be integrated with the existing HVAC system to ventilate classrooms and offices only when unhealthy levels of VOCs are reached. Implementing the Tools for Schools Program in conjunction with an iAQ monitor is a surefire way to earn an “A+” in IAQ.