Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grants - Institute/Initiative Community Support

The consequences of poor classroom air quality and ventilation are significant and multifaceted and are a growing concern for child health and wellbeing in Canada. While the recent pandemic, forest fires and heat waves have put this issue at the forefront of public awareness, adequate air quality and ventilation has been an unresolved issue in Canadian classrooms for many years before the COVID-19 pandemic. Proper ventilation, air purification and air conditioning can be combined to reduce exposure to and transmission of airborne respiratory illnesses (such as COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus), excessive heat, excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, exterior pollutants including wildfire smoke and allergens and indoor pollutants including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and mold. While the issues have been well described separately, measures to address air quality have been applied piecemeal across Canada, with variation between and within provinces and between different school settings such as public versus private schools. These disparities mean that air quality is likely to be suboptimal across much of the Canadian education system, compromising the physical health, mental health, and development and learning of Canadian youth. The current project wishes to reduce these disparities and improve youth health with the three objectives of this proposal (1) bringing together diverse stakeholders to understand the challenges behind optimizing air quality for youth, (2) providing clear, coherent information on the benefits of air quality improvements that speak to different audiences (e.g. parents, school boards, health ministries), and (3) assembling grant proposals for formal study of air quality impacts on the physical and mental health of children in Canada, particularly Quebec.