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Asthma & School Performance

By 3L at Seton Hall University School of Law and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

The Los Angeles Times reports that, "[d]espite a state law that seeks to prevent schools from being built near freeways and mounting evidence that road pollutants harm children's lungs, the Los Angeles Unified School District is in the process of adding seven new schools to the more than 70 already located close to highways." Notwithstanding a law prohibiting a school site within 500 feet of a freeway (with exceptions made when the district can mitigate the pollution or in cases of pressing need), more then 60,000 students attended schools that were within 500 feet of a freeway.

"Scientists from both UCLA and USC have been studying the health effects of freeway contaminants in recent years and have found that they are significant. A report released in February said that children who live near freeways are more likely to suffer from decreased lung function than those who do not live near them.

One of the main culprits, researchers say, seems to be ultra-fine particles, noxious specks that are so light and tiny that they're hard to capture or filter.

'Ultra-fine particle numbers are highest on and around freeways and in experimental studies appear to have much higher levels of the damaging chemicals that are found to have health effects,' said Andre Nel, chief of nanomedicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and co-director of the Southern California Particle Center."

For additional effects of poor air quality on health in general, and educational performance in particular, see here (providing brief summary of 66 studies of relationship between asthma and school performance), and here.

Full post as published by Urban Law Journal on September 24, 2007 (boomark / email).