School siting issues
Reduce your family's exposure

Location is Everything in Reducing Exposure

Clearly, one of the biggest answers to reducing exposure of students to contaminated property is to ensure that schools are not built on land that poses unnecessary health risk to children or staff from contaminated soil, air, or water releases.

We need to act now. Public school enrollment is rapidly growing and is expected to reach an all-time high of more than 44 million by the year 2006. At least 2,400 more schools will be needed to accommodate this increase. So, we need guidelines to protect children against chemical exposures before tens of thousands of children are placed at completely unnecessary risk.

We also need to make sure that when schools are already on contaminated land, that the property is brought up to standards protective of children. If such remediation is not possible, students and staff should be removed from that site.

Insist on the right of parents, teachers, students and communities to be involved in decision-making processes for school siting. Also, insist on advance notification of health hazards associated with contaminants on or near proposed or existing school property.

In the absence of existing guidelines or criteria, the Child Proofing Our Communities Campaign developed a process to help evaluate whether any property is environmentally safe for young children and school personnel. This process begins by involving the community in the site selection process. The second step is to conduct an initial environmental assessment of the site. Depending on the result of this assessment, a more extensive evaluation may be needed. Lastly, the site may have to be cleaned up. This four-step process is described in detail in the campaign’s “Poisoned Schools” report, which you can find by using the “Related Information” link at left.

Even without protective legislation, remember that concerted citizen action really can make a difference. Here are two examples of that:

Cumberland, Maine

The school board attempted to build an elementary school next to a garbage dump, as no laws exist in that state that prohibit building public schools near contaminated land. But the hard work and persistence of the parents in Cumberland forced the school board to retract the proposal.

Quincy, Massachusetts

A high school was going to be built on land that had once been a shipyard where asbestos and other waste was dumped, and later was the site of a steel mill. Parents and other concerned citizens in Quincy fought back to stop this proposal.

To learn more about what you can do to prevent schools from being sited on contaminated land, click on the “Take Action” link at left.