March 24, 2008 - With half a dozen stories about asbestos in schools popping up in the news every week, it’s easy to forget that many schools are beset by many other environmental and safety problems in addition to asbestos.

The problem of asbestos and how to manage asbestos in schools might be a major issue-particularly as schools age and deteriorate-but that’s not the only problem schools are facing.

Deborah Moore, the executive director of a California action group called the Green Schools Initiative, says that asbestos is only part of the story. Moore says that “out of 135,000 schools in the country, only a fraction are green schools.” But what’s a green school, and why is this an important issue?

The goal of the Green Schools Initiative is to ensure that schools in the Brookfield-based action group’s area are safe and healthy places for Brookfield’s children. Clean air, quality drinking water, energy efficiency, healthy food served in the school’s cafeteria, and other environmental and health issues are just as important as the question of how to manage asbestos, since they affect the health of children at the schools, and in turn may affect their ability to learn.

The Green Schools Initiative believes that making environmentally sound choices for schools is crucial, and Moore says that thinking of schools as “little cities” is important to understand why. Schools use energy, produce waste, have transportation systems, and can make many decisions autonomously, meaning that schools have the capacity to make decisions that affect health, safety, and the environment.

This concept is well-illustrated by the EPA’s asbestos in schools management plan program. All schools that contain asbestos must produce an asbestos management plan that details where asbestos is located in the school, the condition of the asbestos, and what steps have been taken to contain the asbestos and prevent exposure.

The school must keep the plan updated any time its asbestos status changes, and parents and school employees can request to see a copy of the asbestos management plan at any time.

The asbestos issue also illustrates the ‘green schools’ concept fairly well. Older schools-those built prior to the 1980s-are highly likely to contain asbestos, due to the widespread use of the substance in construction materials between the 1940s and 1980s.

These older schools are also more likely to have outdated, inefficient heating and lighting systems, less likely to be able to meet the needs of today’s students, and more likely to be unable to cope with the demands of an increasing school roster.

Older schools are also more likely to be riddled with asbestos. Hundreds of thousands-even millions-of dollars may be needed over the long term to update these schools, and continue to protect children from dangerous substances such as asbestos.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, California. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.