The volunteer-led organization Ontario School Safety is renewing calls to the Ontario government to improve indoor air quality in schools.

The call comes as Ontario sees a rapid increase in cases of the flu, particularly impacting young children.

In April, 2021, the Government of Ontario announced it was investing over $130 million, in addition to funds from the Canadian government, to upgrade school infrastructure to protect children from COVID-19. The majority of this funding was earmarked for ventilation projects to improve indoor air quality.

HEPA filters continue to be required in kindergarten classrooms and learning spaces without mechanical ventilation, but Mary Jo Nabuurs, a spokesperson for Ontario School Safety, tells CityNews there was no education on how to use the filters and so there are grave inconsistencies across boards and even within individual schools.

“Even in a school itself, you could have some portion of the school be really well ventilated based on the ventilation system they have there, but another portion of the school may not be,” Nabuurs says.

She says the government needs to test air quality in schools to see where improvements are most needed.

“We have been asking them and insist that they invest in measuring the air quality in those spaces, schools and school buses, and not leaving it as something for which school boards have to pull from an already overstretched budget,” she says.

Clean indoor air is a human right

There have been multiple scientific studies that show good air quality can increase productivity and mental health, but during the cold and flu season, it is also crucial to help limit the spread of airborne viruses.

Common airborne viruses include the common cold, COVID-19, pertussis (whooping cough), strep, TB, measles and influenza. But Nabuurs says she hears from families that that is not always common knowledge.

“We simply inhale the air that someone who is infected breathed out, like so easy,” she says.

She says schools and school buses are also large transmission hubs because of a mixture of small spaces, poor air quality, and the susceptibility of kids to these illnesses.

In 2023, the Ontario government carried Bill 86 which targeted improving air quality in non-residential workplaces including the legislature itself, but little work has been done on schools.

“The cost of investing in it will repay itself over and over and over again over time,” Nabuurs says. “[We want] families and people to know that clean indoor air is a human right.”