Why Indoor Air Quality in Schools is a Priority for Parents

Tuesday, 31st January 2023

The pandemic taught us a lot about the importance of indoor air quality (IAQ) on health. Yet it’s not just COVID-19 itself that’s the worry.

Attention to IAQ has become more urgent than given added concerns about the flu season. While flu seasons typically run throughout the winter months, there’s evidence that it’s been much more severe and longer-lasting since the pandemic. And IAQ could be making it worse, particularly in schools.

According to the United States Department of Labor, a typical school has approximately four times the number of occupants as an office building, for the same area of floor space. Add to the mix other issues schools face—ageing buildings and decreased natural ventilation (as staff try to combat skyrocketing fuel costs)—and you have the perfect recipe for poor IAQ.

That’s why Infogrid recently commissioned a study into the perspectives of parents on IAQ in schools. We wanted to hear their concerns about the impact of air quality on their children's health and learning outcomes.

We found that across the UK and US, many parents are worried about the lack of investment in school indoor air quality. In fact, many say they’d be willing to remove their child from school if air quality was found to be below acceptable levels.

Clearly, IAQ is front and centre for parents of school aged children—and for good reason.

But how does poor IAQ contribute to poor school outcomes? And why do schools face so many challenges when trying to improve it? In this article, we explore these questions in detail, and share our recommendations for making every school a healthier place.

But first, let’s dive into why parents are so concerned in the first place.

What do parents think about indoor air quality in schools?

In September 2022, we surveyed 2,476 parents of children across the US and UK about their thoughts on IAQ in schools.

Here’s what we discovered:

Most parents feel their child’s school isn't investing enough money and resources into providing clean air. Over half of parents (51% in the UK and 55% in the US) feel schools aren’t doing enough to lower pollution and improve air quality.

Many parents would want to remove their child from school if they discovered their school had high levels of CO2 and air pollution. Nearly half (48%) of parents in the UK and almost three-quarters (73%) of those in the US agreed.

Parents are concerned that schools aren’t taking basic measures to improve IAQ. For example:

Overall, fewer than half of parents report that schools are opening windows to improve ventilation (47% in the UK and 48% in the US).
In the UK, only one in four said schools are regularly cleaning to reduce dampness and dust (44%), while only a third said their child’s school monitors CO2 levels (38%).
In the US, parents report that more effort is being made to improve IAQ. Two thirds said their schools were reducing dampness and dust through cleaning (65%) while over half said the school was monitoring CO2 levels (56%).

Many parents think that more of a school’s budget should be used for new technologies that could improve air quality in classrooms. This is especially true in the US, where approximately three-fifths (59%) of parents agreed.
Nearly half of parents (45%) surveyed in the US worry that air quality in the classroom will harm their child’s health. The number of respondents that shared this concern was substantial in the UK too.

Why poor IAQ in schools matters so much

While outdoor air quality often gets the most attention, indoor air quality monitoring is arguably more important.

The average person spends 90% of their time indoors, and research has found indoor pollutants can be as much as 5% higher than outdoor levels (and sometimes, many times higher). In fact, poor IAQ is now ranked as one of the top five environmental risks to public health according to studies by the EPA’s Science Advisory Board.

But while it’s bad news in any context, poor air quality in school is a particularly urgent concern:

School-aged children are more vulnerable to the effects of poor IAQ. To quote the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ‘the developing bodies of children might be more susceptible to environmental exposures than those of adults. Children breathe more air, eat more food, and drink more liquid in proportion to their body weight than adults.’
Nearly one in 13 school aged children have asthma—which has been shown to be exacerbated by high allergen contractions and exhaust fumes. Asthma is the most common cause of school absences among chronic illnesses.
High CO2 levels have a negative impact on learning. One study found that high levels of CO2 in primary school classrooms decrease concentration and attention. Researchers equated this effect to the deterioration seen when students skip breakfast in the morning.
Schools tend to have inadequate IAQ levels. The London School Report (2018) found that mean indoor PM10 and PM2.5 levels recorded in most classrooms were above daily guideline values.
Meanwhile, the 2022 Air Quality in UK Classrooms Report found that almost three-quarters of teachers (72%) thought air quality in their classrooms was ‘below standard’ with almost the same proportion of teachers (77%) saying that poor IAQ affected concentration in class.
Concerns about catching flu and other illnesses are greater than ever. Schools have long been a place where viruses are transmitted. But after the pandemic, the risk is higher than ever, with more severe illnesses being spread.

Getting other factors right, such as temperature, humidity, and air pressure, also plays a huge role in protecting against things like mould, dry eyes and even in the transmission of viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Good IAQ in schools is not just a nice-to-have—it’s a crucial aspect in safeguarding child health and education. Nonetheless, many schools are struggling to maintain it.

What are the current challenges with maintaining good IAQ in schools?

Why do many schools struggle with maintaining good IAQ? There are several potential factors at play:

Schools tend to have a lot of HVAC equipment, but don’t necessarily have the staff or resources to optimally maintain them.
With fuel costs soaring, schools may be hesitant to open windows for natural ventilation, which leads to a build-up of indoor pollutants—especially as space in schools is limited.
Particular subjects, e.g. Science, Design Technology, Art, Textiles and Woodwork have the potential to generate more indoor pollution than would be seen in a typical office environment.
Schools sometimes need to use structures such as portable classrooms that aren’t able to provide the best facilities for maintaining good IAQ in the long term.
Many schools are located near main roads with high traffic volumes and subsequently, higher levels of pollution, including particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen.

So despite the essential need for maintaining good IAQ in schools, looking after the health of young people, and promoting good educational outcomes, many schools are falling short.

At Infogrid, we believe there’s a better way forward.

How can schools improve IAQ?

When it comes to good IAQ, key systems need to be in place. Ventilations systems need to bring outdoor air inside, pollutants and allergens should be monitored and filtered out, and temperature and humidity controlled automatically.

For schools, in particular, an effective IAQ system needs to be able to adapt to changing conditions seamlessly—by automatically responding to changes in occupancy and levels of indoor pollutants at different times of day and across the year.

The Infogrid Healthy Building System is designed to do that and more. It’s the first scaleable, intelligent solution that takes care of every factor that contributes to a healthy building, including IAQ.

What’s more, our Healthy Building system has been designed to help drive efficiencies across the board, which means better standards of maintenance, a much lower carbon footprint, and reduced building running costs. The benefits are real: we helped a supermarket chain save $1.6 million a year on HVAC energy costs alone.

Read more about how we’re on a mission to make educational spaces better with real-time air monitoring. Or sign up for our demo to see our Healthy Building solution in action.