Niland school to get filtration system
NILAND — Grace Smith School will serve as the initial site of a pilot program that seeks to install air filtration systems in local schools.
The campus was selected as the result of a survey that determined a significant percentage of its students reported having asthma, said Calipatria Unified School District Superintendent Doug Kline.
That survey was then used by the county Air Pollution Control District to successfully apply for funds from the California Air Resources Board, Kline said.
“I got to give credit to (ACPD Director) Matt Dessert,” Kline said. “He kind of steered money into this thing.”
The air filtration system will be installed as part of the IQAir Foundation’s Clean Air for Kids program, which to date has installed such systems in about 150 schools statewide.
The foundation has pledged to continue to work with the APCD to seek additional CARB funding for additional air filtration systems for local schools, said Nancy Dinella, IQAir Foundation community outreach director.
“This is the first of many that we’re hoping to install,” Dinella said.
The Board of Supervisors, acting as the ACPD board, on July 9 approved a funding agreement between APCD and Calipatria Unified School District to install the air filtration system.
The five-year funding agreement will provide up to $244,964 for the installation and scheduled replacement of the air filters at Grace Smith.
The funds come from a combination of the state’s Clean Air Fund Balance and a $150,000 penalty that a local entity was required to pay for a reported air pollution violation, said APCD project manager Belen Leon.
Currently, the APCD’s Assembly Bill 617 steering committee is asking for community input to help select additional school campuses found within the Calexico-Heber-El Centro corridor that could potentially have air filtration systems installed in the near future if funding becomes available, Leon said.
The IQAir Foundation is the only company in the state that is capable and qualified to be able to carry out such a project, she said.
Grace Smith School resides in an area impacted by high levels of ultrafine toxic diesel particulate matter (PM 2.5), the county reported.
In May 2018, University of Southern California environmental health researchers conducted a survey of students at Grace Smith and Fremont Primary, located in Calipatria.
Of the 25 Grace Smith students who were surveyed as part of the AIRE (Assessing Imperial Valley Respiratory health and the Environment) study, 24 percent of them reported having asthma, according to information provided by Kline.
The campus’ asthma rates were significantly higher than the state’s 12.5 percent and nation’s 8.4 percent.
Additionally, 48 percent of the survey’s respondents reported persistent wheezing or coughing, while 17 percent reported having used asthma medication in the past 12 months.
The USC Keck School of Medicine researchers surveyed students between the ages of 7 and 9 who were in the second or third grade.
“They determined that we have a really high presence of asthma in our kids,” Kline said.
News of the pending installation of Grace Smith’s air filtration system was shared by Kline with USC researchers, who told him they would like to assess the system’s potential impact on the students’ lung health.
“They are going to come back in another two years to see if this filtration system will have any effect on our kids,” Kline said. “We’re very interested in seeing the results of the study to see if it had an impact.”