Safety group will go to court if government doesn’t improve air quality in Ontario schools

Ontario School Safety (OSS) is considering legal action to force the provincial government to improve indoor air quality in schools and on school buses. They issued the threat after claiming multiple attempts to discuss this issue directly with the Ford government were ignored, the group said.

“Ontario’s provincial government has failed its general duty to provide a safe, stable, and healthy working environment for children and youth, their caregivers, the education system and all Ontario communities,” reads the statement from OSS, which advocates for safe, in-person education for all students in Ontario.

Concerns about indoor air quality at schools rose to the fore during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and were reinforced earlier this month when wildfires briefly filled Ontario skies with dangerous amounts of smoke.

Poor indoor air quality results in the spread of airborne illnesses like COVID-19, and failing to provide clean air in schools and on buses goes against provincial Occupational Health and Safety recommendations, the statement said.

Canada’s National Observer reached out to Ontario’s Ministry of Education for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

But a statement from 2021 on the ministry’s website reads that every year, Ontario invests $1.4 billion to maintain and renew school facilities, including HVAC systems and windows, to ensure all schools have improved air ventilation and that the ministry deployed over 70,000 ventilation devices.

OSS believes not enough has been done. It has launched a GoFundMe campaign and has already raised more than $40,000 of its $75,000 target to pay for a legal challenge if the government doesn’t act. Students and education workers attending schools in-person spend several hours a day indoors, for almost 200 days per year, which makes the air quality of the buildings they are in incredibly important, the group said.

Air quality will also be important as smoke from fires worsens, notes Kate Laing, chair of the OSS board.

“We know that the climate crisis isn't getting better — in fact, it's getting worse,” she said.

“Opening a classroom window no longer guarantees ‘fresh air’ — and for the classrooms in Ontario that don't have air conditioning, the inability to open windows because the air quality outside is poor really highlights the need for clean indoor air.”

Laing said ventilation and filtration are going to be a big part of any solution for schools and school buses. The OSS wants the province to create an air quality committee composed of experts like ventilation engineers to work with students and school staff on solutions. Air quality experts concur there is a need for operations standards or requirements for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).

“It is absolutely the right time now to prioritize indoor air quality and improve it for our children,” said Joey Fox, chair of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers’ air quality advisory group. “The COVID pandemic has shown us how our buildings can make us sick and the wildfires have shown us how we need our buildings to keep us healthy.”

Having clean air is a right that has been ignored for too long, he added. “Clean air must be a priority, especially in our schools where our children have no choice but to be there every day,” he said.

Fox said the first step is to bring in consistent and transparent CO2 monitoring so it’s easy to spot problems with air quality and find ways to improve it.

On school buses, ventilation can be improved by opening windows as much as possible, weather permitting. Even cracking open a few windows when it's cold can have a big impact. Opening the hatches, running the exhaust fans, and setting the defroster as high as possible with fresh, not recirculated, air are other effective measures. Drivers should be educated, and schools need policies instructing them to use these methods, he said.

Ensuring clean air is important for so many reasons, said Jeffrey Siegel, professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto and a member of the university’s building engineering research group. Poor indoor air quality in schools is associated with increased absenteeism, lower performance on standardized tests, lower academic and cognitive performance, increased asthma frequency and severity, and even lower salaries when students graduate, he said.

With all these ill effects from poor air quality at play, the question should not be how much it costs, but instead how much it costs not to invest, said Siegel.

Siegel said every environment requires a different set of tools and solutions. A modern school with an advanced HVAC system will require a different approach than an older school.

There are some general principles that should be followed, such as source control and good ventilation, Siegel said. But air quality control systems should have the ability to filter outdoor air in schools in regions prone to wildfire smoke or other outdoor air quality issues.

He also recommended that schools not invest in unproven air cleaning systems or use indoor air quality as a way to discriminate against students. It is unfair to disallow children with respiratory diseases like asthma from participating in school activities instead of providing clean indoor air, Siegel added.

Recently, the Toronto District School Board cancelled some outdoor activities in schools for several days due to high levels of air pollution caused by smoke from forest fires in Quebec and northeastern Ontario.

This story was produced in partnership with Journalists for Human Rights for the Afghan Journalists-in-Residence program funded by the Meta Journalism Project.