EPA's Healthy School Environments Webpage Resources

  • 09/01/14

More than 53 million children and almost 3 million adults spend a significant portion of their days in approximately 112,000 public and private school buildings, many of which are old and inadequately maintained, and which often contain environmental conditions that inhibit learning and pose increased risks to the health of children and staff.

The Healthy School Environments Web page is intended to serve as a portal to on-line resources to help facility managers, school administrators, architects, design engineers, school nurses, parents, teachers and staff address environmental health issues in schools.

While the information is primarily intended to help improve the environment of school facilities, educational resources for students and teachers can also be found through the Healthy School Environments portal — epa.gov/schools.

The resources identified have been developed by EPA, other federal agencies, states, local governments and non-governmental organizations. Visitors can browse resources by topic or by geographic area, or search all resources by entering specific keywords into the search box at the top of each page.

The EPA webpage also provides access to outreach materials including: voluntary guidelines on school siting and a soon-to-be-released document on school environmental health; Sensible Steps to Healthier schools: Cost-Effective, Affordable Measures to Protect the Health of Students and Staff; Idel Free Schools Toolkit and Updated EPA guidance on PCBs in fluorescent light ballasts.

To access these materials, visit www2.epa.gov/region8/healthy-school-environments.

— Reprinted in part with permission of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

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