Importance of providing healthy air in Child Care Centres
There are many impurities that affect air quality. Poor indoor air quality (IAQ) is widespread and causes many health risks. Educational institutions, like schools and preschools, are also affected. Children are at risk of falling ill due to impurities in the air they breathe at school. Some of these impurities include volatile organic compounds (VOC), indoor air pollutants and contaminants, level of relative temperature and humidity, bacteria, fungi, mould, and others. These impurities cause headaches, allergies, nausea, asthma, and other medical conditions. The health risks are too great for any centre to ignore.
Child Care Centres need to ensure the safety of their students by providing better indoor air quality. Apart from healthier and happier children, there are numerous other benefits. Some of these are:
Improved general health
Studies have shown that centres that are proactively taking steps to provide healthy air – controlling moisture, AC cleaning and maintenance, etc. – have noted a great improvement in the general health of their children.
Less sick days
We all know there are kids that will do almost anything to stay home because they are “sick”, but it is sad when the centre actually makes kids sick. As mentioned above, poor IAQ causes a number of medical conditions that are responsible for millions of lost school days each year. Centres that implement provide better IAQ have decreased absenteeism from sick days than the ones that don’t.
Better learning ability
There have been in-depth researches and studies showing that improved indoor air quality in centres dramatically improves learning abilities in children.
Teacher Turnover
Child Care Centres that have good indoor air quality management strategies retain a higher number of teachers and have an even better rate of gaining new ones. This is important for any educational institutions because it minimizes the cost and time of recruiting and hiring teachers. It alleviates the stress that can be put on a child, when or if their teacher has been replaced or off sick. Making their time at child care for both child and parent a lot more pleasant.
These are only some of the many benefits that a child care centre can have for providing healthy air in their institution. It, therefore, is the centres’ responsibility to ensure it has the best IAQ so that both the institution and child are successful.
©Sanitair™ 2014