Collaborations and Partnership Webinar: Asthma Pilot Project for Head Start October 24th, 2011, from 1:00-2:30pm EST

Join the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Georgia Department of Public Health to learn about their partnership and collaborative effort to conduct outreach and deliver environmental health risk reduction messages related to environmental asthma triggers in Head Start and Child Care settings.

Through the Care for Their Air: Asthma Pilot Project, a partnership was formed to develop outreach strategies that would increase awareness and educate staff and families about environmental health risk factors to young children and to facilitate access to resources that could be integrated easily into ongoing Head Start and Child Care program activities. By providing staff and families with information about comprehensive asthma environmental management practices and secondhand smoke prevention, children will be less at risk and live in healthier environments.

Participants of this webinar will:

• Learn about the methods to create partnerships with federal, state and local agencies and how to increase capacity to serve Head Start and Child Care communities.
• Discover how to adapt the training module used in the pilot project and integrate asthma education into Head Start and Child Care program activities for staff, parents and children.
• Find out about the measures used to evaluate the pilot activities and training.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/873927033

Expanding the School Siting Conversation: A Webinar Series

To encourage healthy, sustainable schools and communities, the Council for Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI), the National Center for Safe Routes to School, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, and EPA are offering a series of educational webinars, including a live chat with experts. The first-ever federal school siting guidelines will be featured throughout the series.

Who Should Join? Local education agencies, tribes, legislators, state agencies (health, transportation, education, environment, and historic preservation), and others interested in policies and practices that lead to healthier citizens and sustainable communities across the United States.

Save the dates:

October 11	1:00pm eastern/10:00am pacific	Location, Location, Location: New Guidance for Locating Schools in a Healthy, Sustainable Way
October 18	2:00pm eastern/11:00am pacific	State Strategies for School Siting; Locating Schools for Better Health, Environmental, and Fiscal Outcomes
October 25	2:00pm eastern/11:00am pacific	School Siting – Advancing Environmental Justice and Preservation Through School Siting
November 1	2:00pm eastern/11:00am pacific	A Live Chat on School Siting and Community-Centered School

All sessions run for 1 hour. For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.preservationnation.org/issues/historic-schools/webinar-series.html.

EPA Releases Voluntary Guidelines for Selecting Safe School Locations

New tools available for communities making school siting decisions

WASHINGTON –The United States Environmental Protection Agency is pleased to announce new guidelines to assist school districts and communities in selecting environmentally safe and healthy locations for schools. The voluntary school siting guidelines will help communities better protect the health of students and staff from environmental threats when selecting new locations for schools.

More than 1,900 new schools serving approximately 1.2 million children and costing more than $13 billion opened in the 2008-2009 school year (the most recent year for which data are available). Major investments in our children’s schools can be compromised if environmental hazards are not fully understood prior to selecting a school location.

The voluntary guidelines provide tools to help communities ensure that new locations for schools are environmentally safe and beneficial to the students they are intended to serve. EPA strongly recommends identifying and evaluating hazards associated with a location prior to taking title or ownership of that property, or in the case of leased space, prior to executing the lease.

“EPA is offering tools to local officials and community residents to help identify healthy locations for schools that foster productive learning environments,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “This voluntary guidance will help address the pressing environmental issues that parents, school boards and local residents often consider when making investments in their local schools. By offering guidance on long-term environmental and health concerns, it will also help local communities plan ahead and reduce the risk of costly changes down the road.”

Children are uniquely at risk from environmental hazards. They eat, drink and breathe more in proportion to their body size than adults. In addition, environmental contaminants may affect children disproportionately because their immune, respiratory and other systems are not fully developed, and their growing organs are more easily harmed. This means they are more at risk for exposure to harmful chemicals found outside where they play and in the environments where they spend most of their time – school and home.

The potential impacts on children’s health and education, as well as the damage to the community when school environmental hazards are later identified, are significant. In some cases, schools have been closed or have had to undergo costly remediation to address issues that could have been evaluated before construction.

The voluntary guidelines give local communities tools to help them consider environmental health issues when identifying potential school locations and recommendations for involving the public at key points in the site selection process. The guidelines are not designed for retroactive application to previous school siting decisions but are designed to inform and improve the school siting decision-making process from this point forward.

EPA developed the voluntary guidelines in consultation with other federal agencies, states, school districts, community organizations, health care professionals, and teachers, as well as environmental justice leaders and children’s health and environmental groups, among others.

The release of these guidelines coincides with the beginning of children’s health month. EPA has scheduled children’s health month activities at various EPA headquarters and regional locations throughout the month of October. Please visit EPA’s children’s health month website at http://yosemite.epa.gov/ochp/ochpweb.nsf/content/chm-home.htm for more information.

More information: www.epa.gov/schools.

US EPA Releases New Guidelines for Safer Schools

News from the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, http://chej.org.

First-ever federal school siting guidelines hit the street

Monday, October 3. The Environmental Protection Agency released its voluntary School Siting Guidelines. Now school districts can look toward a federal policy model for guidance when constructing a new school facility.

For a decade, CHEJ has been working with concerned parents’ groups, teachers’ unions and community groups to address a range of toxic hazards facing schools in America. Thousands of schools are located near toxic waste sites or major sources of air pollution, such as chemical plants or incinerators. A 2002 study by CHEJ of just five states identified more than 1,100 schools within a half mile of a contaminated site, negatively affecting the health of more than 600,000 students.

The final release of the guidelines marks a milestone for safer schools, but much remains to be done. Many states still have no laws that restrict the building of schools near serious environmental hazards. CHEJ will be working with groups in New York and elsewhere to adopt toxic-free school zone policies and to educate school boards and other officials so they make better decisions about locating new schools. The guidelines are a strong tool in our fight to protect children’s environmental health. Congratulations to everyone who worked toward this victory!

October is Children's Health Month

EPA is celebrating Children’s Health Month by highlighting activities to promote healthy school environments. To learn more about EPA’s healthy schools programs visit www.epa.gov/schools. To learn more about Children’s Health Month visit:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ochp/ochpweb.nsf/content/chm-home.htm

7th International IPM Symposium 2012 Update

The 7^th International IPM Symposium, "IPM on the World Stage—Solutions for Global Pest Challenges," will be held March 27–29, 2012 in Memphis Tennessee USA at the Memphis Cook Convention Center.

http://www.ipmcenters.org/ipmsymposium12/

International IPM Achievement Awards

The organizers of the 7th International IPM Symposium are seeking nominations for the "Achievement in IPM Awards". Nominations are open to individuals, organizations, or companies practicing in agricultural, urban and natural settings and worthy of recognition for implementation of integrated pest management (IPM) and innovative approaches to reduced-risk pest management.

Anyone may nominate another individual, organization or business, and self-nominations are accepted. Individuals or teams will be considered and nominations of commodity groups, private organizations, non-profit organizations, consultants, growers, and municipalities are encouraged.

Award nominations must be submitted using the online nomination form available at http://www.ipmcenters.org/ipmsymposium12/index.cfm?page=AchievementAwards. Deadline for nominations is December 15, 2011.

Sessions and posters

The Program Committee will be finalizing the program in the next few weeks. Watch the website for updates. A call for poster presentation abstracts will be sent in late October.

Sponsors, Contributors and Exhibitors

Corporations, agencies and other organizations with interests in IPM are invited to provide financial support to the Symposium. Your support is critical to the networking and collaboration this event facilitates, increasing IPM adoption and benefits to health, economics, and the environment. For more information, contact Brenna Wanous, Finance and Exhibits Committee co-chair, at 307-460-9578 or bwanous@uwyo.edu.

Special Invitation for Regional Meetings, IPM-Related Programs, and Informal Conferences

To save travel costs, take advantage of the opportunity to schedule meetings for your group or organization before the symposium on Sunday, March 25 or Monday, March 26 or after the symposium on March 29 or 30. Facilities have been reserved to accommodate such meetings. Several groups have already asked for space.

Meeting rooms are also available in the evenings during the event for informal conferences.

To reserve space for your group, please send an e-mail to ipmsymposium@ad.uiuc.edu by December 15, 2011. Please include the name of the group, date and time desired, anticipated number of attendees, and preferred meeting room setup. For informal conferences, please include a brief proposal along with your request that will be reviewed by the program planning committee. The room rental fees will be covered by the IPM Symposium. Any food or audio-visual costs will be the responsibility of the meeting group.

There is a limited amount of space, so space will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.