Annual school air quality test results haven’t been released on time because the former Higgs government ordered every school to be tested.
Usually the data, which measures carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in classrooms to indicate overall air quality, is released in the last few months of each year and focuses on several dozen schools without mechanical ventilation systems.
But this time, they’re all being tested.
Comments closedCanada’s postsecondary institutions have a responsibility to protect students and others on campus from the risks of post-COVID condition as a matter of campus safety.
Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, Mona Nemer, recently released the report, Dealing with the Fallout: Post-COVID Condition and its Continued Impacts on Individuals and Society.
Post-COVID condition (PCC), also known as “long COVID,” refers to the poorly understood and often serious health damage left by the SARS-CoV-2 virus after the acute illness appears to have passed.
Universities, colleges and schools have a duty to take reasonable precautions to protect students, staff and faculty from foreseeable harms. They must ensure the water on campus is safe to drink. They must install fire and carbon monoxide detectors and make evacuation plans. Many have adopted a smoke-free policy on campus as part of a commitment to an international charter on health promotion in universities and colleges. Yet there is little pandemic health promotion on Canadian campuses.
Comments closedKingston Secondary School will have its automated heating, ventilation and air conditioning system inspected next week following the publication of a student-written article that found the concentration of carbon dioxide in the school exceeded safe levels.
Principal Darren Seymour sent a letter to students, staff and parents last week in response to the article that appeared in “The Bears Bulletin.”
Comments closedLast year’s record-breaking wildfire season forced Canadians to become familiar with the scale of air pollution as hazardous smoke drifted across the country.
Environment Canada’s colour-coded Air Quality Health Index, designed to help people understand health risks associated with contaminated air, was closely watched under hazy, orange skies that stretched beyond the Canada-U.S. border.
But the AQHI, measured on a scale from one to 10+, was not calculated the same way in all provinces and some people were unsure how index values applied to their daily activities.
Environment Canada hopes several changes being made this year will improve how air quality-related health risks are communicated and understood by the public.
Smoke from wildfires in Western Canada will soon be drifting high overhead, but it poses no health risk in Eastern Ontario, says Environment Canada.
“Taking a look at our guidance and the weather patterns this week and the way things are panning out, it doesn’t look like Eastern Ontario needs to be concerned about its air quality at this time,” Trudy Kidd, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said Monday.
“At best, people might see some haze in the skies in the coming days as the forest fire smoke makes its way through and disperses aloft, but from what we can tell at this time, the particulate matter — and that’s what’s of concern when it comes to forest fires — we’re expecting it to stay aloft,” she said.
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