Fluke 971, 985 Service Guide

Indoor air quality:
Can your schools
pass the test?

Ask many school administrators
about the air quality inside their
buildings, and the frank answer is
liable to be “Well, we don’t know.”

They should. School air quality
and student performance go
together as naturally as breathing
in and breathing out.

In the words of the U.S. Envi­ronmental Protection Agency
(EPA), “Good indoor air quality
contributes to a favorable learning
environment for students, per­formance of teachers and staff,
and a sense of comfort, health,
and well-being. These elements
combine to assist a school in its
core mission educating children.”

This article provides key facts
about why school air quality is so
important, plus the building blocks
to start developing an air quality
management plan to help your
schools provide a healthy and
comfortable indoor environment
and minimize risk and liability.

1

Application Note

A threat to the school’s
educational mission

Poor IAQ can compromise the
learning environment, trigger
health problems among students
and staff, and snowball into
major issues of remediation and
liability.

A 2004 rev

•

Department of Education
identified adverse health
effects related to the presenc
of chemical pollutants, lead,
biolog
mold, allergens and airb
particles.

iew by the U

ical pollutants such as

.

.S

ne

or

The same study concluded

•

that “it is also likely that inad
equate IEQ (indoor environ­mental quality) conditions are

ommon in U.S. schools and

c

e

lead to adverse effects on stu­dents and teachers.”

1

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) IAQ Tools for Schools Kit, IAQ Coordinator’s Guide.

2

A Summary of Scientific Findings on Adverse Effects of Indoor Environments on Students’ Health,
Academic Performance and Attendance, page 10, U.S. Department of Education, 2004.

3

Asthma F

From the Fluke Digital Library @ www.fluke.com/library

Measuring ambient temperature and relative humidity to evaluate air comfort.

The EPA reports that asthma,

•

-

often triggered by airb
agents, causes more school
absenteeism than any other

ondition,

3

2

acts, U.S. EPA, May 2005.

chronic childhood c
and costs students 14.7 million
missed days a year.

or

ne

In Seattle, one of many sys-

•

tems dealing with mold prob­lems in schools, four schools
are under repair and adminis­trators are surveying IAQ dis­trict wide. One board member,
citing the district’s slow
response to mold complaints,
called for the district to pay the
medical bills of all affected stu­dents and staff. At the same
time the district faces a $20
million budget shortfall, and
was considering a proposal to
close ten schools.

AQ) is definitely a signifi-

“(I
cant issue for schools, but so is
money, and so is time,”

Rich Prill, building sc
specialist with the Washington
State University Extension
Energy Program. “So unless
(school administrators) have an
immediate IAQ problem, it is typ­ically a back burner thing.”

Under a federally-supported
program, Prill and his associates
take a satchel of measurement
instruments to about 100 North­west schools each year and
assess the air quality in occupied
classrooms, measuring such IAQ
factors as temperature, relative
humidity and moisture, air flow,
carbon dioxide (CO2) and levels
of airborne particles.

But when a resource such as
Rich Prill is not available, how
does an administrator or facility
manager k
exists? Better yet, how can
school staff identify changing

onditions and prevent problems

c
from ever cropping up?

now an I

A

ys

sa

ience & IAQ

Q problem

Creating an IAQ
management plan

Begin your planning by review­ing the existing indoor air quality
standards. The American Society
of Heating, Refrigeration and Air
Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
publishes guidelines for ventila­tion, air filtration and tempera­ture and humidity management.
The National Air Duct Cleaners
Association (NADCA) has specifi­cations for duct cleaning.

Keep in mind that even when
standards are still under devel­opment (such as for airborne
particles or mold spores), your
IAQ management program can
establish benchmarks that
enable you to deal with emerg­ing problems before they turn
into an expensive liability.

Perhaps the most widely
known IAQ resource for schools
is the

EPA Indoor Air Quality

Tools for Schools Kit

contains a wealth of information
and many useful checklists that
help guide administrators and
others through the indoor air
quality management task.

The WSU Extension Energy
Program has also developed this
“3-Step IAQ Program” for schools
in Washington, Oregon, Idaho
and Alaska.

4

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/
tools4s2.html

.4The kit

Step One—Identify a coordinator
for IAQ in each building, typically
the head custodian, the facility
director, or an HVAC (heating,
ventilation and air conditioning)
technician.

Step Two—Do a thorough top to
bottom, inside and out IAQ walk­around of the facility and assess
the specific IAQ challenges for
each building—whether it’s
particles, moisture, ventilation,
pollutants or comfort.

Step Three—Create an IAQ pro­gram to address the challenges.
The program starts by taking
credit for what is already being
done, and then adopting some
additional good practices to
address existing deficiencies.
Prevention is the goal.

The key to prevention is to
first understand the building
from an IAQ perspective: the Step
Two assessment provides a doc­umented “baseline” of conditions.
Now the conditions in the build­ings can be routinely monitored
for such critical IAQ factors as
temperature, humidity, CO2, and
particle levels. Not only do these
routine measurements provide
early warning if the numbers
deviate from the norm, but the
record provides evidence of
proper operation and attention to
good practice.

With a well-planned IAQ monitoring and control program,
using the right instruments, the facility director, maintenance
technician, or head custodian can:

Help identify indoor air quality issues before they become major problems

•

Improve comfort and increase teacher performance and student achievement

•

e health risk

Reduc

•

Pinpoint causes and avoid costly and/or unnecessary and ineffective repairs

•

Clearly demonstrate the district

•

void negative public

A

•

2 Fluke Corporation Indoor air quality: Can your schools pass the test?

s and exposure to asthma triggers

ommitment to prov

’s c

ity, loss of c

ommunity trust, litigation and financ

iding adequate indoor air quality

ial liability