Canada urged to improve indoor air quality for kids

Advocate says current laws can be adapted

As Canada stares down another impending fire season, experts are sounding alarm bells for governments and institutions to act on providing cleaner air for some of our most vulnerable. According to a new report, the frameworks to do so are already in place.

The Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment (CPCHE) and its partner organizations have issued an urgent call to action Thursday, in a bid to improve indoor air quality on an increasingly polluted world.

“Children are particularly susceptible to harm from air pollutants … They’re much more vulnerable to the health effects of poor indoor air quality because their bodies, brains and respiratory systems are still developing,” Erica Phipps, the executive director of CPCHE, told the Star.

But while their report investigating Canada’s existing legislative tools to improve indoor air quality found that measures did exist, they are significantly underutilized and lacking in specificity. Phipps hopes her organization’s call to action would spur action.

“There is not a dearth of policy levers that can be leveraged to address these issues,” she said. “What we’re seeing is a lack of focus, a lack of prioritization in terms of guidelines.”

The physical and psychological impacts of air pollution have been widely documented in adults, and are expected to be compounded in kids.

With their smaller bodies and higher physical activity levels, children breathe in more pollutants per kilogram of body weight than adults, Phipps explained. Combined with their developing bodies, air pollution exposure can lead to respiratory problems, allergies and even reduced cognitive function down the line.

Air pollution can also cause or worsen asthma, the leading cause of school absenteeism in Canada, according to CPCHE’s news release.

Meanwhile, ventilation, filtration and the reduction of polluting sources have been associated with improved brain function and reduced school absences. Cleaner indoor air may also cut down on the spread of contagious diseases.

Children spend a significant chunk of their time indoors and in educational settings. As climate change continues to accelerate, Phipps said earlier and more intense fire seasons coupled with heatwaves mean improved indoor air quality is urgently needed.

“Air pollution is not an outdoor issue,” Phipps continued. “There’s evidence showing that the quality of the outdoor air directly affects the quality of the indoor air … (and research suggests) compared to other buildings, schools actually have greater infiltration of air pollutants from the outdoors.”

According to CPCHE’s report, Canada has multiple legal mechanisms that can be used to improve air quality, including occupational health and safety statutes, public health laws, human rights legislation and more.

The problem, according to Theresa McClenaghan, executive director and counsel of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, is the laws are lacking in specificity toward child care and educational settings — and very little work is being done to tailor new programs to these settings.

For example, all the provinces’ public health authorities have broad powers to act, McClenaghan said — “But often if they don’t have specific requirements by their province, to focus on schools, for example, or on indoor air quality, then they won’t necessarily.”

This lack of specificity and guidance can often lead to miscommunication between the layers of government and institutions.

Phipps recalled when an official in charge of maintaining facilities in Newfoundland schools learned about the dangers of cancer-causing radon gas — despite Canada’s schools and child care programs being required to test for radon for years.

This official and their team taught themselves how to do the screening and proceeded to test hundreds of Newfoundland schools, Phipps said. But many schools across Canada don’t, either through ignorance of the rule or a lack of enforcement. CPCHE’s report also revealed that because most funding streams for air quality improvements are integrated into school budgets, most child care settings are cut off from accessing financial support.

This, alongside a lack of tailored programs for home-based child care, only intensify the equity challenges faced by poor and marginalized individuals and communities, who may rely on these services for their affordability and accessibility, the report read.

This was especially pronounced in Indigenous communities, who may lack the funds or the tailored guidance to act.

McClenaghan added that certain First Nations communities “are much more disproportionately impacted by wildfire events”; as wildfire seasons are expected to intensify, air quality inequities urgently need to be resolved.