ATHLETE Toolkit – Schools

Air pollution

We know that air pollutants, such as those coming from traffic, can negatively impact on health for everyone, from children to older adults. Air pollution is linked to a large number of health issues, including lung disease and asthma, heart health, birth outcomes like head circumference and birth weight, and cognitive development.

We know from our work in ATHLETE that children are highly exposed to air pollutants during their commutes to school. And, schools can be air exposure hotspots due to vehicles idling during school drop-off and pick-up times and children are closer to vehicle tailpipes, which increases their exposures.

Learn more about air pollution from:

• The UK government – air pollution at a glance
• The World Health Organization

Chemical pollution

Chemicals are everywhere, from making our plastic containers strong but flexible, to their use as antimicrobial agents or preservatives in our soaps, lotions, and cleaning products. They play a useful role in our products but can also be harmful to our health because they can disrupt our hormones, such as our thyroid, oestrogen, and androgen hormone pathways, and exposure to these chemicals have been linked to a wide range of health outcomes including obesity, gestational diabetes, and worse glucose tolerance.

Children can be exposed to these chemicals from the soaps used in toilets, the cleaning products used in schools, and the trays their school food comes on.

Learn more about chemical pollutants like hormone-disrupting compounds from:

• Our ATHLETE partners, the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL)
• The Chem Trust
• Research that we have carried out in ATHLETE and the Born in Bradford cohort:

  ATHLETE BiB Evidence Briefing- Harmful Exposure

  Personal Care Products poster

• Learn how to monitor the amount of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels by your school. NO2 is an air pollutant that comes from the burning of fossil fuels and highly linked to traffic. It can be monitored using devices called ‘diffusion tubes’

• Learn how to monitor particulate matter using a personal sensor, the Atmotube Pro. We used these personal devices in ATHLETE with our pupil citizen scientists. Top tips we have for these devices:

• • They need to be charged frequently – do it daily to keep them topped up and prevent them from running out of energy
  • The GPS may be patchy – if you are keen to understand your pupils’ location of exposures, have them plot out their route on a map just in case
  • Teachers are very busy! Take care that this doesn’t add an additional burden on their workload. If you are working with reserachers, ask them to take on the main administrative roles of ensuring the devices are charged and working properly

• In ATHLETE, we have developed an air quality workbook with activities to carry out with pupils to engage them in learning about air pollution. Take a look here!

• We have worked closely with the Bradford local government on air pollution research. They have developed additional resources including education and activities which can be downloaded from their website, the Bradford Clean Air Schools Programme

First, check the levels of exposure around your school! In the UK, you can check your local pollution levels using this handy checker. You can also look at live pollution levels from sensors from all around the world – see which ones are closest to you.

You can check if your school soaps and cleaning products contain harmful chemicals by checking them against products analysed by the Environmental Working Group or using apps like the Yuka app*

Armed with this knowledge, there are various ways your school can tackle these exposures:

• Develop a School Street so that spaces in front of schools are safe and free from traffic during the school drop-off and pick-up times
• Find a bespoke action plan for your school with the Clean Air for Schools Framework, including ways of raising awareness within your school and with your local government and understand what actions you could take in your school and at the school gates to improve the environment for staff and students
• Find out how you can transform your school for children’s safety and health
• Learn how to co-produce with your local community and local stakeholders and take action! Find even more resources here!
• Advocate for change at a higher level! Write to your local elected official
• In ATHLETE, schools in Bradford, UK and Barcelona, Spain took part in co-production workshops to identify interventions that could be put in place by schools to try and tackle the air pollution levels children were being exposed to. We found that awareness-raising and knowledge- and behavioral-change based interventions were the easiest to put into place but that they were not effective at reducing exposures to air pollution. Schools and pupils advocated for bigger structural and environmental changes which are more likely to be effective. You can help advocate for these changes by writing to your government officials, taking action at the school gates such as anti-idling rules and School Streets

*note that these resources may differ in how they determine what is a potentially harmful ingredient. You can find how they calculate their risks on the EWG and Yuka websites.