This paper examines the relationship between indoor air quality (IAQ) and student academic performance in school settings. It explores how poor IAQ contributes to illness — including sick building syndrome, asthma, allergies, and communicable diseases — and how these health effects translate into absenteeism, reduced educator effectiveness, and curriculum delays that affect all students. The paper also addresses the direct cognitive impacts of poor air quality beyond illness, the common sources of IAQ problems in schools, the lack of regulatory protections for students, and the budgetary vulnerabilities that leave many schools with inadequate ventilation and maintenance. Drawing on EPA guidance and peer-reviewed research, the paper argues that IAQ is a systemic educational equity issue with cumulative effects on student outcomes.
Historically, student performance was thought to be the result of the direct factors a student encountered in the classroom environment. As long as the student was taught in an appropriate manner, the prevailing thought was that the student would be capable of learning. However, it became apparent that students could be exposed to the same curriculum under tremendously different circumstances with tremendously different results. Therefore, educators and the general public began to recognize other factors that impacted student performance. These factors could be seemingly obvious — such as whether the student had literate parents at home to help with schoolwork — or more subtle, such as childhood malnutrition and its deleterious impact on learning.
One of the concerns that many modern educators and environmentalists are beginning to examine is the interrelationship between indoor air quality (IAQ) and student performance. It is well established that poor indoor air quality can affect health. However, the impact of poor air quality on school performance goes beyond health alone. Poor IAQ can impact school performance directly and indirectly in two major ways: first, by causing illness, and second, by reducing the ability to perform specific mental tasks.
Poor IAQ is linked to illness in a wide variety of ways. While people often think of lost performance in terms of sick leave, perhaps the most pervasive problem is actually underperformance attributable to IAQ-related health issues. There are many symptoms of mild distress linked to poor IAQ that may not amount to a diagnosable illness but still result in people not feeling well. Symptoms may include lethargy, headaches, sore throats, itchy eyes, or similar mild complaints that are not sufficient to warrant time away from school or work, but do interfere with performance. "When these types of symptoms are made worse by being in a building, they are referred to as 'sick building syndrome'" (EPA, 2000, p. 2).
Some buildings cause health problems that are more severe and contribute to more than mild discomfort. Some of this is due to sensitivity in the child. For example, children with asthma may be especially sensitive to buildings with IAQ problems. In other cases, the quality of air in a building is so compromised that widespread illness results. The potential illnesses include respiratory infections, allergic diseases from biological contaminants, asthma responses, reactions to chemicals, and mold reactions (EPA, 2000, p. 2).
Asthma and allergy responses may seem limited in scope to those who do not suffer from them, but they are actually a major educational barrier for those who do. "Asthma-related illness is one of the leading causes of school absenteeism, accounting for over 10 million missed school days per year" (EPA, 2000, p. 2). If illness rates in a school are high enough, the school may even have to close during remediation in order to prevent further exposure of staff and students to health risks.
In addition to directly affecting health, poor IAQ is indirectly linked to illness because indoor air temperature and relative humidity are related to airborne levels of molds and bacteria, which in turn affect the amount of illness present in a building. When air is not properly filtered, disease is more likely to spread. These are secondary diseases — many of which are highly communicable, such as colds and flu — that may not be directly attributable to IAQ but find favorable growth conditions in the same environments that promote negative IAQ.
Moreover, schools face a greater risk of poor IAQ in the immediate aftermath of a flood, typhoon, or other natural disaster, when standing water and structural water damage place the facility at risk. Internationally, this has proven to be a significant health risk in the Philippines as students have returned to school after typhoons (Pittman, 2014, p. 3). Domestically, a parallel problem was seen in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Not surprisingly, these problems are compounded in lower-income areas where districts may lack sufficient funding for the remediation needed to address water damage and restore air quality.
"All students affected when teachers or peers fall ill"
"Common IAQ sources in schools and preventive practices"
"Lack of IAQ standards and budget constraints harm students"
Clearly, indoor air quality has an impact on student performance, and that impact goes beyond simply the health effects on students who are vulnerable to the illnesses linked to sick building syndrome. All students in schools with poor IAQ are affected by the lower overall performance of students and staff in the building, even those who do not experience any direct negative health effects. Moreover, it seems likely that these effects are cumulative: students who fall behind in any grade because of IAQ-related issues will be at a relative disadvantage compared to peers who attended schools without the same deficiencies. Addressing indoor air quality in schools is therefore not merely a health issue but an educational equity issue with long-term consequences for student achievement.
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