Cars should stop idling around schools

Idlewilde was New York’s go-to airport until 1963 (it’s now JFK). Idle hands may be the devil’s workshop. And Eric Idle and the rest of Monty Python are getting active again.

But have you thought about the idle threat that moms and dads make when they line up in their cars for “pick-up-n-go” at schools across the country?

Idling cars can cause a lot of health problems for kids, exposing them to densely polluted air from car exhaust and triggering coughing, asthma and bronchitis.

One idling car emits 20 times more pollution than a car travelling at 50 km/h and it spews ozone, sulphur, dioxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and more. Geez, wheeze!

The benefits of cleaning up schoolyard air were pretty clear when Washington state retired smoke-spewing school buses or retrofitted them with natural gas; they saw a 30-per-cent drop in kids’ visits to the emergency room for asthma and bronchitis.

Now educators and parents in some locales are realizing that it’s up to them to clear the polluted air from idling cars in their schoolyards, too.

But more parents, administrators and kids need to tune in to turning off the idling engines. So now — as Monty Python says — for something completely different, your school can:

Create classroom science projects on exhaust pollution’s health hazards and have kids tally the number of idling cars and the length of time they idle.

Create a pledge letter for parents to sign, promising to turn off their car after 10 seconds in line.