Take It Home
Most people have no idea how polluted the air in their homes is. People only think of smokestacks and exhaust pipes when they think of air pollution, but there are many smaller sources that have a big impact on our environment and our health.
Clean Up Your Air at Home
After everything your students have learned about air pollution and air quality, they should have some good ideas for how to improve air quality and prevent air pollution at home. Have your students design a handout to take home to parents. Brainstorm different tips as a class. They could include:
Open windows.
Reduce the use of products that have chemical smells, such as cleaners, perfumes, and air fresheners. You can find information about safer alternatives to these products at www.healthychild.org.
Grow plants.
Dust and vacuum regularly.
Don't idle your car in the garage.
What else can your students come up with? What about ideas for preventing outdoor air pollution? Driving less is one of the biggest ways people can act on outdoor air pollution.
After you've come up with all of your easy steps, have each child write them on a piece of paper and then decorate it either by drawing pictures on it or cutting pictures out of magazines. Give it more punch by having a line on the back of the handout that says “Our family commits to ” and a line for a parent signature.
Burn Barrels
Some people, especially in rural areas, burn their trash in pits or barrels. It seems an easy way to get rid of your garbage, but the smoke it creates has a lot of really unhealthy toxic chemicals. Burning things like foam cups, plastics, and colored and bleached paper in backyards or even fireplaces causes smoldering toxic smoke that can spread throughout the neighborhood. It's not like municipal garbage incinerators because the big burners have fires so hot that many of the toxic chemicals are virtually eliminated. They also have big filters at the tops of their smokestacks that catch a lot of the other bad stuff. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that between the years 2002 and 2004, backyard burning released more chemicals into the air than all other sources during that time period. When people burn trash at home, they have no way of capturing the pollutants. Backyard trash burning is a common method to dispose of garbage, but what can be done? This is a perfect issue for a letter-writing campaign.
Learn more about this issue by going online and searching for backyard burning. Have your students write letters to your state legislators asking them to make laws banning backyard burning. Also ask them to find ways to help farmers and ranchers dispose of their garbage safely.
