Clean, Green and Healthy Schools Regional Highlights showcases exceptional school environmental health projects within each of EPA’s ten regions.

EPA Region 5 includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin; and tribes.

On this page:

• 2014
• 2013

2014 Highlights

Leveraging Partnerships at All Levels to Impact Illinois Schools

As a way to expand its reach and strengthen its impact with regional schools, EPA Region 5 has joined with local, state, and federal partners. Maryann Suero, Region 5 schools coordinator, notes that the region has had difficulty connecting with individual schools or school districts in past years, but has found success in collaborating directly with groups that are trusted by the schools. Stakeholders like trade associations, community groups, government agencies, and professional organizations have acted as liaisons between the EPA and the school districts, leading to more tangible, influential outcomes.

At the local level, Region 5 has continued its work as part of the Kane County Healthy Places Coalition, a team comprised of more than 30 different organizations, including the Kane County Health Department, municipal governments, hospitals, advocacy groups, private companies, and non-profits. The Coalition seeks to engage and mobilize community partnerships to improve the environmental health and well-being of all Kane County residents, particularly children, due to their increased vulnerability. The group has been working to promote its anti-idling initiatives in parks and municipalities for a number of years and recently began including schools in these efforts. Illinois does have anti-idling laws in place to address the harmful health effects from diesel exhaust, but they are poorly enforced and receive low compliance. Over the next year, the Coalition will conduct surveys to get a better sense of how, if at all, Kane County schools are working to reduce idling.

At the state level, Region 5 has partnered with the Illinois Association of School Business Officials, an organization created to provide school business officials with resources to support their management goals. It offers the Facilities Management Designation Program, which provides professional development, education, and networking opportunities for facility directors, building managers, and superintendents. For more than seven years, Region 5 has been a central component of this training, emphasizing the importance of creating healthy school environments and sharing the resources available to assist facility managers with their efforts. In addition, the region has been able to bring in some of its own partners to conduct training, such as their Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, to provide practical, evidence-based advice.

Region 5 also partners with agencies that have mutual interests in promoting children’s health in schools. With the relationships it has cultivated with agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Education, it is able to organize joint programs incorporating its message on children’s health and safety in schools to engage a larger audience than any one agency would be able to reach alone. Working with well-established programs like USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s National School Lunch Program allows the region to communicate the importance of addressing all aspects of a child’s well-being in healthy school programs, from the nutritional value of the food they eat to the quality of the air they breathe.

2013 Highlights

Partnering with Local Companies to Improve Management of Chemicals in Schools

EPA Region 5 began the “Collar Counties” Community Environmental Health Initiative in 2011 to improve environmental health in four Illinois counties: Kane County, Kankakee County, Will County and Lake County. This geographic area consists of over 2.5 million people, and contains the second and third largest cities in Illinois. In 2010, R3 Environmental, Inc., an environmental management company in the Chicago area, signed a partnership agreement with EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response to help create healthier school environments by assisting a school to improve their chemicals management. In 2011, R3 Environmental and Region 5 conducted safe chemicals management training for science teachers from Elgin High School, a Kane County school with 2,500 students, 74% of which are low income. The training taught teachers about laboratory safety, principles of safe chemicals management, developing a chemical hygiene plan and green chemistry. The participants also learned about “micro-scale chemistry,” which utilizes scaled-down experiments to teach chemical principles, thus using less hazardous chemicals. The training also introduced teachers to Children’s Environmental Health and to EPA’s school environmental health programs, such as IAQ Tools for Schools, Integrated Pest Management and the Healthy School Environments Assessment.

After the training, EPA Region 5 and R3 Environmental helped Elgin High School to assess their chemical inventories and identify approximately 2,500 lbs. of inappropriate, outdated, unknown and unnecessary chemicals, including 30 lbs of mercury. R3 Environmental funded the disposal of the chemicals, saving the school over $13,000.  Region 5 worked with Elgin High School to develop a chemical management program which the school subsequently implemented. EPA Region 5 also worked with Elgin HS to put more focus on children’s environmental health in their environmental sciences curriculum.

After their work at Elgin High School, R3 Environmental encouraged another Chicago-area company, EMCO Chemical Distributors, Inc. to contribute to the “Collar Counties” Community Environmental Health Initiative. EMCO contributed $3,000 to help Waukegan High School in Lake County, IL, dispose of 2,700 lbs. of hazardous chemicals, including 63 lbs. of mercury. EPA Region 5 conducted safe chemicals management training for the science department, and helped the school to develop and implement a chemicals management plan which will help reduce unnecessary chemical exposure to students. EPA Region 5 also helped Waukegan High School plan an event for the U.S. Green Building Council’s Green Apple Day of Service, in which students created brochures on safe chemical management in the home, and shared them with families, in both English and Spanish, during the school’s homecoming week. Waukegan High School serves about 4400 students, of which 95% are minority, and 66% are low income.