The 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, aka
"OSHA," is the federal law that protects workers in the workplace. It
requires employers to provide working conditions free of hazards and seeks to
"assure safe and healthful working conditions for men and women."
OHSA assures an employee’s right
to know about any chemical hazards they may be exposed to through the Hazard
Communication standard. This standard requires employers to inform and train
employees about hazardous chemicals or substances to which they may be at risk
for exposure while at work. In addition, to monitor compliance, OSHA inspectors make unannounced
on-site checks to ensure workplace safety.
But what about our children in
schools? How are they being protected?
Let’s
consider that a child’s school is his or her workplace. It’s a place where they
spend at least 1/3 or more of their day, day after day – in classrooms, in and
around school bus loading zones and on playgrounds or sports fields. As concern grows over increases in
childhood asthma, cancer and other illnesses, researchers are looking at the
kinds of chronic, low-level exposures that OSHA would look at. In the school
environment, this includes diesel exhaust from idling vehicles, chemicals in
cleaning products and pesticides used on school grounds
Because of a
child's rapidly developing physiology and natural behavioral patterns, their vulnerability
to environmental toxins is greater than that of adults. Yet there is no OSHA – no federal
statute or agency – to protect children (or teachers, administrators and
staff) from environmental exposures in schools.
It is every
child’s right to live and learn in a safe
and healthy environment. In the absence of federal oversight, the job of
protecting children's health falls to state education departments which are
often ill-equipped to handle matters of workplace exposures or pediatric toxicology.
Local school boards, facing a myriad of other issues, may be similarly unable to
address these exposures.
Thus it
falls on parents, teachers, administrators and staff to advocate for the
highest levels of environmental quality in their own schools, and to seek ways
to mitigate or eliminate toxic exposures. It is for them – and the children
they protect – that we created The ChildSafe School.
- Lana