Environmental Health Center

Everyone Has the Right to Breathe Clean Air

That is why the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center has developed the Teacher's Guide to Indoor Air Quality. This guide contains all the information teachers will need to teach an educational unit on indoor air quality. The guide is designed for use in fourth through sixth grade classrooms and can easily be incorporated into the general science or health sections of the curriculum. The activities draw on a variety of students' skills, including science, vocabulary, reasoning, math, and basic biology.

Why Target Indoor Air Quality?

On average, people spend about 90% of their time indoors. Sixty-five percent of that is spent at home. To make matters worse, those who are most susceptible to indoor air pollution are the ones who are home the most: children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies have found that for many pollutants, levels inside are 2 to 5 times higher than outside. After some activities, indoor pollution levels can be 100 times higher than outdoors.

The Environmental Health Center believes that by informing young people about the hazards of indoor air pollution and what can be done to avoid or correct problems, students can have an impact on the future. The lessons and activities contained in this guide will help young people understand the importance of clean air, and specifically, what they can do to help clean the air they breathe.

What Does the Guide Cover?

Each lesson comes with suggested activities that highlight and reinforce what is being taught in that section. All activities and the order in which they are done can be modified to fit the needs of each class. In addition, each section can easily be made into overheads or handouts for the students to use.

Section 1 — Preparation

This section provides guidelines for teachers on what they need to do to prepare before teaching the indoor air quality unit.

Section 2 — Preliminary Knowledge and Followup

This section helps the teacher determine how much students already know or have learned about indoor air quality.

Section 3 — Vocabulary

This section introduces the common indoor air pollutants and words associated with indoor air pollution. After completing this section, students will be able to list common pollutants, sources of those pollutants, some ways to measure indoor air pollution, and health effects.

Section 4 — Major Indoor Pollutants

Use this section to further explain the major indoor pollutants, their sources, and their health effects. Health effects are also covered in the next section, Your Body. These sections can be combined.

Section 5 — Room-By-Room

This section goes through each room in a house and highlights potential sources of pollution, and recommends solutions to help prevent an air quality problem.

Section 6 — Your Body

This section highlights why and how the pollutants affect our bodies.

Section 7 — The Air We Breathe

This section covers how and why pollutants get into the air and the importance of detecting and fixing those sources.

Section 8 — Air Quality in Schools

This section covers the importance of good indoor air quality in schools and classrooms and what teachers and students can do to improve air quality in their classrooms.

Section 9 — Fact Sheets

This section contains fact sheets that pertain to indoor air pollutants.

How Do I Get My Copy of the Teacher's Guide?

You can order the Teacher's Guide to Indoor Air Pollutants for $20 on the publication order form. The Teacher's Guide is also available in a portable document file (pdf) format.

For more information, contact an environmental health specialist at (800) 557-2366 or send us an e-mail message.