(Information from Healthy School Campaign Website)

Each school day, some 53 million students and 5 million staff attend our nation’s schools, representing some 20 percent of the American population. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), half this population may be exposed to polluted indoor air, lead, asbestos, chemical fumes, pesticides, molds and other toxins, along with overcrowding and poor sanitation.

New York recently enacted a state law to make sure schools address this issue and other states are likely to follow suit (see the Resources and Tools section of The Quick and Easy Guide to Green Cleaning for more information). A well-designed green cleaning program can help reduce these harmful exposures and yield many other positive benefits for students, custodial staff, administrators and the environment, including:

1. Green Cleaning Helps Students Stay Healthy and Learn

Research shows a clear link between poor indoor air quality, sick students and teachers, and poor academic and occupational performance. Furthermore, children miss more than 14 million school days each year due to asthma exacerbated by poor indoor air quality, which disproportionately affects low-income and minority students. Green cleaning can help reduce the environmental hazards that negatively affect children’s growing, developing bodies.

2. Green Cleaning Protects the Health of Custodial Staff

Members of the custodial staff, especially women of child-bearing age, are particularly susceptible to health problems caused by their frequent and close interaction with cleaning chemicals and equipment. Choosing safer products and training staff in proper usage can help reduce the number of injuries caused by caustic chemicals, respiratory irritation and dangerous equipment, decrease Workers’ Compensation claims, and lower insurance costs.

3. Green Cleaning Increases the Lifespan of Facilities

Proper maintenance extends the longevity and performance of school building materials and furnishings by preventing damage and premature aging, which in turn reduces waste and unnecessary spending.

For example, school districts allocate a significant amount of money to carpeting, which is expected to have a useful life of 10 to 15 years. A square foot of typical carpet can hide as much as three times its weight in dirt and sand, which act like thousands of small knives, cutting and wearing out fibers in a few short years – long before its useful lifespan and before the district had budgeted to replace it.

4. Green Cleaning Preserves the Environment

Traditional cleaning products can contain harmful chemicals. Depending on the duration, rate and extent of exposure, they can cause cancer, reproductive disorders, major organ damage and permanent eye damage. These cleaning chemicals are also routinely washed down the drain where they find their way into drinking water, lakes and streams, adversely affecting plant and animal life, threatening public health and adding to pollution.

The cleaning industry consumes six billion pounds of chemicals, including non-renewable natural resources such as petroleum, and generates 4.5 billion pounds of paper products requiring the cutting of 35 million trees annually. Buying recycled paper and plastic products can help conserve precious natural resources for future generations.