Air Standards Protect Kids, Asthma Study Says

 

School kids playing outside during recess on hazy winter days can breathe a little easier in the wake of a Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)-participating study.

Preliminary findings of a 2006-07 pilot study at Greenville Elementary in Cache County suggest that it maybe Okay for schools to allow children to play outside for a 15- to 20-minute recess on days when the air quality is less than perfect.

“Although the results need to be verified, this is good news,” said Cheryl Heying, air quality director for DEQ. “The results of this study suggest that the federal air quality standard for fine particulate pollution is protective of public health.” This past winter tougher new federal standards for fine particle pollution went into effect, triggering an alert to the public when the daily average of fine particles known as PM2.5 reaches 35 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3) of air – a 24-hour exposure threshold considered to be harmful to public health.

Health officials and scientists who conducted the study are cautious about drawing over simplified conclusions from it because of a number of factors that weren’t considered, such as long-term exposure and its potential impact on children’s lungs. The study was done during a relatively mild Cache Valley winter that had few days when the fine particle pollution exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. And, the study focused on just a 15-20 minute outdoor recess exposure, not longer.

Even so, the study does provide some observations, noted Steven Packham, toxicologist for DEQ’s Division of Air Quality and member of the Utah Asthma Task Force, which spearheaded the effort with the University of Utah, Department of Health, State Office of Education, and the Bear River Health Department. “The data does not prove that the current guidelines should be relaxed but it does suggest that the current guidelines are very protective.”

The study is a larger-scale version of a similar one conducted at Hawthorne Elementary in Salt Lake City, where DEQ collected data from air-quality monitors placed inside and outside the school from December 2004 to March 2005. The results showed the air quality inside the school was about three times better than the outdoor air. Then last year, pediatricians measured the lung function of 26 students for three months to determine the effect air quality has on schoolchildren’s developing lungs. The study was a pilot and did not have sufficient power to draw any significant conclusions, so researchers expanded it to Cache Valley where 100 students participated.

“The study was designed specifically around recess guidance,” said Dr. Nicole Frei who worked with Dr. Karen Buchi, professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah Medical School, the principal investigator of the study. “It was not designed to look at the accumulative effects of poor air quality over multiple winters. We also want to emphasize the fact that certain kids are more sensitive than others to pollution. But it is a balancing act when weighing other factors such as childhood obesity and other adverse physical and psychological effects of indoor recess or no recess.”

The 100 children involved in the study ranged from ages 7 to 12. Half of the children had asthma. They were questioned on a daily basis concerning their outdoor activity levels during noon-time recess. The children blew into an instrument called a spirometer that measured their lung function before recess and then after recess looking at the effects of a 15-20 minute exposure to measured outdoor levels of air particulate.

The conclusion: No notable effect of a 15-20 minute outdoor recess on asthmatic and non-asthmatic children’s abilities to breathe, even on days when the air quality wasn’t very good.

The findings are preliminary, and still need to be peer-reviewed before they are published. The results of this study may suggest that more studies are needed to determine whether Utah schools should change their current guidelines on when to allow children to play outside during recess or keep them indoors.

But the study is good news to parents and teachers.

“It shows that the current practice of keeping children indoors when air quality is deteriorating appears to be at least protective of children’s lung health and leaves school administrators some room for individual variation when deciding at which point children should be kept indoors during recess,” said Dr. Edward Redd, medical officer with the Bear River Health Department.