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

"Students spend most of their waking hours in school," says Davis. "It is appropriate for parents to inquire of their principal, or someone at the district level, about the cleaners being used in their children's schools. To pick just one example, [according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] students miss 14 million days of school [in America each year] because of asthma exacerbated by poor indoor air quality. This can often be tied to the types of products being used in a school."

What's more, a 2002 study co-sponsored by the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency and several California city governments found that six of every 100 janitors loses time from work due to an on-the-job chemical injury each year, with injuries ranging from respiratory problems to burns to eye irritation.

The list of toxic ingredients commonly found in conventional cleaning products is long.

Sodium hypochlorite, found in all-purpose cleaners and chlorine bleach products, can cause asthmatic symptoms and other respiratory problems. Ammonia-based products can irritate the eyes and lungs and cause headaches. Formaldehyde, used as a preservative in many conventional cleaning products, is a suspected human carcinogen. Perhaps most commonly, the non-essential fragrances found in many conventional cleaning products can trigger asthma.

Relative to their size, children take in more of these contaminants through repeated exposure than adults, which increases their risk for the health problems associated with conventional cleaning products. (Concerned parents can look up the negative health effects of just about any conventional cleaning product ingredient in Environmental Defense's database, www.scorecard. org/chemical-profiles.)

Signs of the Shift Starting this September, by a first-of-its-kind state mandate, all public schools in the state of New York will be required by law to use environmentally friendly cleaners as certified by Green Seal.

Some cities, like Santa Monica, California, and Chicago, Illinois, have already adopted their own greener cleaners initiatives for local school systems, and report great success. Santa Monica, for example, reports that annual expenditures on cleaning products have actually decreased by five percent since implementing its policy more than a decade ago, and Chicago schools report three percent fewer student absences due to illness since implementing a policy two years ago.

Rochelle Davis cites alliances between parents, custodial unions, and concerned citizens as key to Chicago adopting its green cleaning standards. She notes that the plan began as a pilot project in 10 schools, as green cleaning proponents worked to counter the common misperceptions that eco-friendly products are less effective than conventional products or are prohibitively expensive.

"Those are two common barriers that are easy to overcome once schools have experience with the products," says Davis. "Plus, our mayor is very committed to environmental stewardship, so Chicago had other pilots running in libraries and city-run facilities at the time, showing how effective and competitively priced green cleaners can be; it's not just schools."

Anthony Crisafulli, vice president of ATRA Janitorial Company in New Jersey, agrees with Davis. He's been a cleaning products supplier for almost 25 years and sees the switch to greener cleaners as the most significant change yet in his industry. "Once schools find out these products work as well as conventional products with their chemical ingredients known to be liver and kidney toxins, known to cause learning disabilities and so forth, they say, 'Why in the world would we keep using them?' says Crisafulli, who has seen about 35 New Jersey schools shift their cleaning supplies to green alternatives in the past two years.