Most Salt Lake County kids attend school in areas that aren't terribly close to major roadways.
But the 7 percent who do are more exposed to the pollutants linked to asthma, heart problems and a host of other maladies associated with dirty air, says a new study from the University of Utah.
"There's an adverse outcome for kids who go to these schools and play in these schoolyards" close to busy roads, said William M. McDonnell of the University of Utah.
McDonnell, a professor in the U.'s schools of law and medicine, shared the results of the study Tuesday. Along with co-authors Phoebe B. McNeally of the geography department and Sean D. Firth of the pediatrics department, he previewed a presentation they will give in April at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's first-ever symposium on environmental justice.
The trio emphasized that their findings really raise more questions than they answer.
"We haven't assigned any particular risk to any particular school," he noted, explaining that the potential health impacts can be inferred from a growing body of air-pollution studies.
What they did learn came from an analysis of the proximity of schools to different types of roads. The researchers mapped the schools, drew a 500-foot circle around each and classified them according to the busiest nearby road.
Roads with the highest speed limits -- those with greater than 50 mph and presumably the highest traffic -- were close to 7 percent of the county's 349 schools.
Roads with 31-50 mph speed limits and moderate traffic represented nearly 12 percent of the schools, and 81 percent of the schools were surrounded by roads with 30 mph speed limits or less.
"The vast majority of these [schools] are in residential areas, which is good," McDonnell said, noting that children spend about 30 percent of their time at school or in schoolyards. "But there are certainly some inequities."
The group also considered socioeconomic factors, based on census data.
They found that the schools in the areas of greatest poverty and least education were the ones that were most likely to be in the high-traffic areas. And schools nearest the least busy roads are located in neighborhoods with the highest percentage of high-school graduates and the lowest percentage of households in poverty.
The researchers said they hope to expand on this initial work, possibly studying schools throughout Utah or looking at areas of more concentrated pollution. Perhaps further study will help answer a key question: Would it be worthwhile for Utah to adopt a law like California's that limits the construction of new schools close to major roadways?
Audience members had lots of ideas of their own about what to do next, such as filtering the air at schools in high-traffic areas or using sound walls to block some pollution from schoolyards.
"Clearly," said Kent Udell, an engineering professor and husband of Utah Moms for Clean Air founder Cherise Udell, "what we need to do is cut down the pollution coming from vehicles."
Incentives for clean-fuel vehicles would be one way to clean up the air near schools, he noted.
