Helping Kids Breathe Easier: Campaigns to Rid Schools of Toxins Promote Eco-Friendly Cleaners

Patti Wood has always been serious about keeping toxins away from her family.

She cleans her house only with non-toxic, environmentally friendly cleaners, avoiding petrochemicals and other synthetic ingredients in favor of all-natural products. She keeps pesticides out of her yard and garden, and shops organic for almost all the food in her home - including the cat food! Concerned about toxins in her neighborhood when her daughters were small, Patti created a pesticide-free buffer zone around her family's house by speaking with each of her neighbors about the dangers of pesticides, convincing everyone on her street to go all-natural with their lawn care.

Still, as careful as Patti is at home, her daughters spent huge portions of their time at school. One day, while Patti was tending the organic garden she'd started at her daughter's elementary school, a groundskeeper approached, spray can of pesticides strapped to his back, ready to fumigate. Patti turned him away, but the experience taught her that to create a truly toxin-free environment for her children, she'd have to work on reforming their school as well.

"That day in the garden encouraged Patti to go to the school administration and start making changes," says her husband Doug, recounting the tale. "This was supposed to be an organic garden, and she saw it as a way of showing people that a lot of the chemicals we use just aren't really necessary."

Today, with their children grown, Patti and Doug Wood run Grassroots Environmental Education, a Port Washington-based nonprofit that goes beyond pesticides in showing people how the use of toxic chemicals is not really necessary. With a major initiative teaching parents about the importance of using non-toxic cleaners in schools, Grassroots has spent the last six years leading the way toward a healthier, more environmentally friendly school system in New York state.

"Children are uniquely vulnerable to toxins in a way that adults aren't," says Doug Wood. "People think of children as little adults, but they're not. Physiologically they're still developing, and behaviorally they interact with their environment in ways adults do not. They roll on the floor, they put their hands in their mouths, they put their heads down on the desks. That's why it's so important for parents to be concerned about the kinds of cleaning products used in their children's schools."

Why Green Cleaners? The switch to greener cleaners provides a host of benefits for schools, and benefits society at large from the beginning to end of the supply chain, protecting workers from handling toxic chemicals at production plants and during use, and keeping toxins from washing into the environment after use.

"Treating our commons - the air and water and natural systems - as infinitely capable of absorbing insult no longer works," says Arthur Weissman, president and CEO of Green Seal, Inc., which certifies environmentally friendly cleaning products. "The human body, it turns out, can be very sensitive to chemicals that it has not evolved or adapted to, and the same holds true for all the living systems with which we share this planet."

Rochelle Davis, director of the Chicago-based Healthy Schools Campaign, cites four clear reasons why green cleaning in schools is important. Greener cleaning products, Davis says, help students stay healthy and learn better at school, protect the health of school custodial staff, increase the lifespan of facilities, and help preserve the environment.