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Environment & Pollution
School districts in Houston are becoming increasingly aware of the detrimental effects of ozone pollution. Ozone in the air can cause asthma sufferers and outdoor activists to suffer breathing difficulties that are sometimes life-threatening.
The Houston area is battling Los Angeles for the claim to the worst air quality in the country due to high rates of ozone pollution.
The Clear Creek Independent School District is working in conjunction with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Institute of Houston to raise awareness of ozone pollution.
Using funding from the fines levied by the commission against industrial polluters, the Clear Creek school district installed ozone monitors in each of its three high schools in September.
The installation of the monitors is the first step in a two-part program – The Air Quality Education Initiative – that is hoped will reach other Houston area school districts.
The monitors were located in the school district because the Southeast Houston area is known to suffer from ozone alerts often and there were no monitors in the immediate area.
“Within a week of having the site go up we had a high ozone alert day out here, but nowhere else in the city,” said Brenda Weiser, director of environmental education for the institute.
The monitors are wired into the TCEQ’s Austin headquarters and send updated readings every minute that can be monitored by the public on the Internet.
The monitors are located in enclosed rooms and connected to instruments outside by wiring. A computer LCD screen is located in the school hallway so passing students or teachers can watch the ozone levels on a line graph.
A high peak on the graph indicating an ozone alert could impact school athletics being held outdoors as well as other community activities. Having the monitors allows real-time data to be used in determining safety issues, said Weiser.
The second part of the initiative program involves using the information gained from the monitors and using it in the classroom for science projects and a newly developed Air Curriculum.
Sally Wall, a science teacher at Seabrook Intermediate School, developed the 26-lesson curriculum at the request of TCEQ because they wanted to find an appealing way to raise awareness among the students. Although, Wall says the program is about far more than raising awareness.
“Just having a monitor with data isn’t exciting,” said Wall. “We need to do more than just make the students aware of the problems. We also have to get them to start thinking of solutions.”
The educational portion of the initiative is fully developed and more than 25 teachers have completed the training, said Weiser.
The curriculum is already being used in schools in Connecticut, and training for area teachers is expected to grow this fall, said Weiser.
John D. Wilson, executive director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention, praised the monitors and the educational initiative but says that education, while raising awareness, cannot clean Houston’s air.
“The ozone monitors have already proven their worth,” said Wilson.
Nonetheless, Wilson believes there is a simpler solution to the problem.
“It would be better to clean up the problem than to invest all this energy in monitoring and warning people, but the reality is that industry will not easily agree to stop releasing pollution,” said Wilson. “ It is not necessary to live with this pollution when the problem can be corrected if the state and federal governments work on the problem.”
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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