National Healthy Schools Day: What you can do to make sure no child’s health is left behind
I am so excited to have my first guest blogger on My Web of Life! Janelle Sorensen is the Senior Writer and Health Consultant for Healthy Child Healthy World (www.healthychild.org). You can also find her on Twitter as @greenandhealthy.
When my husband and I first toured schools to find the one we wanted to enroll our daughter in, I’m sure I was silently voted one of the strangest parents ever. Why do I feel I was secretly endowed with this title? Because every room and hallway we were taken through, I sniffed. A lot. And, according to my husband, I wasn’t terribly discreet.
I didn’t have a cold or postnasal drip. And, I’m not part bloodhound. I was simply concerned about the indoor air quality. My daughter was (and still is) prone to respiratory illnesses and I wanted to be sure the school she would be attending would support and protect her growing lungs (in addition to her brain). For many air quality issues, your nose knows, so I was using the easiest tool I had to gauge how healthy the environment was.
While air quality is a significant issue in schools (the EPA estimates that at least half of our nation’s 120,000 schools have problems), parents are also increasingly concerned about other school health issues like nutrition and the use of toxic pesticides. Many schools are making the switch to healthier and more sustainable practices like green cleaning, least toxic pest management, and even school gardening. What they’re finding is that greening their school improves the health and performance of students and personnel, saves money (from using less energy, buying fewer products, and having fewer worker injuries among other things), and also helps protect the planet. It’s truly win, win, win.
To highlight the issue, the Healthy Schools Network coordinates National Healthy Schools Day. This year, over three dozen events will be held across the country (and more in Canada) on April 27th to promote and celebrate healthy school environments.
What can you do? Healthy Schools Network recommends simple activities such as:
• Adopting Guiding Principles of School Environmental Quality as a policy for your School;
• Distributing information related to Green Cleaning or Indoor Air Quality (IAQ);
• Writing a letter or visiting your Principal or Facility Director to ask about cleaning products or pest control products;
• Walking around your school: looking for water stains, cracks in outside walls, broken windows or steps, and overflowing dumpsters that are health & safety problems that need attention. Use this checklist.
• Writing a Letter to the Editor of your local paper on the importance of a healthy school to all children and personnel.
You can also help support the efforts of states trying to pass policies requiring schools to use safer cleaners. (Or, initiate your own effort!) There are good bills pending in Connecticut, Minnesota, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon. According to Claire Barnett, Executive Director of the Healthy Schools Network, the key pieces to promote on green cleaning in schools are:
• Not being fooled by ‘green washing’ claims—commercial products must be third-party certified as green (to verify claims);
• Understanding that green products are cost-neutral and they work; and,
• Learning that “Clean doesn’t have an odor.”
She encourages parents and personnel to tune into one of the archived webinars on green cleaning (like the first module for general audiences) at www.cleaningforhealthyschools.org.
The fact of the matter is that whether you’re concerned about the quality of food, cleaning chemicals, recycling, or energy use – schools need our help and support. Instead of complaining about what’s wrong, it’s time to help do what’s right – for our children, our schools, and our planet.
What are you going to do? There are so many ideas and resources. Find your passion and get active on April 27th – National Healthy Schools Day.
Additional Resources:
Creating Healthy Environments for Children (DVD): A short video with easy tips for schools and a variety of handouts to download and print.
Getting Your Child’s School to Clean Green: A blog I wrote last year with advice based on my experience working with schools.
Healthy Community Toolkit: Healthy Child Healthy World’s tips and tools for being a successful community advocate and some of our favorite organizations working on improving child care and school environments and beyond.
The Everything Green Classroom Book: The ultimate guide to teaching and living green and healthy.
Filed under Green School and Churches, Guest Bloggers | Comments (3)Breastfeeding? Scheduled for a biopsy? Please read and then spread the word.
This was originally posted at Motherwear’s breastfeeding blog and was brought to my attention by Crunchy Domestic Goddess. I thought it was important enough to share and received permission to repost it here. Please read and then forward this information on to other women.
Picture this: You’re breastfeeding. You notice a lump. First maybe you think it’s a plugged duct. But then it doesn’t go away, after many, many feedings. You’re worried about it, so you make an appointment with your doctor, who doesn’t think it’s related to breastfeeding. She sends you for a mammogram, but you’re told that you’ll have to have weaned for six months before the test can be done. What do you do?*
I’ve mentioned before that I’m involved in a powerful research project based at the University of Massachusetts, and supported by the Love/Avon Army of Women breast cancer project.
I’d like to explain more about it now, and ask for your help in recruiting participants for it.
It’s probably news to most of us (it was to me) that when you make milk, cells from your milk ducts are exfoliated off in the process. These are called epithelial cells, and they’re detectable in your milk.
Past research has demonstrated that long before we notice a lump, those epithelial cells start changing in ways that are precursors to the development of breast cancer.
Dr. Kathleen Arcaro, a UMass professor who studies breastfeeding and breast cancer risk wants to analyze those cells. She’s been nice enough to visit a breastfeeding group I run, and answer questions about breastfeeding and breast cancer.
The primary goal of her research is to determine if it’s possible to create a non-invasive, early way of assessing our breast cancer risk through our breastmilk. If it’s successful, it would also establish ‘molecular biomarkers’ for breast cancer risk.
An additional benefit to breastfeeding mothers is that we would not be told, as some are, to wean before a mammogram or biopsy can be done. No more choosing between breastfeeding and a breast cancer test. It could be as simple and sending in a milk sample to a lab!
In order to conduct this research, Dr. Kathleen Arcaro needs to find 250 women who are both lactating and scheduled for a biopsy. To participate, you’d overnight milk samples to her lab, at no cost to you.
So if you, or someone you know, is both breastfeeding and scheduled for a biopsy, please ask them to email either me, Dr. Arcaro, or Dr. Sarah Lennington as soon as possible. You can visit the project’s website to learn more.
If you write a blog or are in contact with lots of moms on a forum, please pass this link around!
And if you haven’t done it yet, register for the Love/Avon Army of Women. You’ll join one million women volunteering to become part of a rich pool of women researchers can use to find the causes and prevention of breast cancer. You can see other participating studies on the site. Here’s a recent Today Show clip on the project.
* Mammograms can be done on lactating breasts, but they are viewed as less accurate than on non-lactating breasts. Some doctors will do them, others require mothers to wean first. Some send mothers for ultrasounds.
Filed under Guest Bloggers | Comments (2)Embracing Joyful Simplicities
Year by year the complexities of this spinning world grow more bewildering and so each year we need all the more to seek peace and comfort in the joyful simplicities.
-Woman’s Home Companion, December 1935
I think that I have already mentioned that I am reading Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach for the second time. It is a fantastic resource as well as a source of inspiration with daily meditations and tips for fun and simple celebrations to have throughout each month. The message for today, January 31, really spoke to me so I found Ms. Breathnach’s website and contacted her for permission to reprint her message of simplicity. I hope that you gain as much from it as I have. I also hope that your home is soon filled with the comforting scent of a hearty soup.
“We all have days in our lives that are marked by great moments of rejoicing and celebration: the baby is born, the promotion comes through, the book contract is signed. But life is not an endless round of cake and champagne. There’s a lot of drudgery to most of our days: sheets to be changed, dry cleaning to pick up, garbage to put out. To keep our daily round from being all drudgery, we’ve got to savor the art of the small: discovering diminutive delights that bring us peace and pleasure. In 1949, the British playwright J. B. Priestly gathered together such moments in a book of essays entitled Delight. Among his favorites: waking in the morning to the smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon; reading detective stories in bed; suddenly doing nothing in the middle of the day; buying books; and enjoying the company of (instead of just tolerating) small children.
It’s a winter’s day. Can you make a pot of homemade soup for supper tonight? I relish this joyful simplicity once a week during the winter. Chopping, paring, and scraping are very calming activities. Really look at the colors of the vegetables – the orange of the carrots, the bright green celery, the pearly white onion. You have a beautiful still life in front of you. Don’t rush through the process but enjoy the mindfulness, or the Zen, of cooking. Isn’t the fragrance of homemade soup wonderful? It makes you glad to be alive or at least at your own house for dinner.
Don’t you see how we have to seize the essence of life? We have to embrace every moment. ‘People need joy quite as much as clothing. Some of them need it far more,’ Margaret Collier Graham wrote in 1906. Today, make discovering those joyful simplicities that bring you personal comfort and a sense of well-being one of your highest priorities.”
Attempting to simplify my life is a process that I am currently going through and often struggle with. I find that the simpler my routines, and the more organized my home, the greener choices I seem to make. But why does simplifying seem so difficult? To me, this quote was the perfect reminder to slow down and relish the basic necessities (and joys) of life. Simply chopping some (hopefully organic) vegetables for a hearty soup to nourish self and family. It is this type of moment that is important in life. We need to make sure we slow down long enough to cherish it.
Bon apetit.
Filed under Guest Bloggers, Life in General | Comment (0)The Buzz on Bush
My husband, Steve, writes a very interesting blog called The Buzz. He doesn’t write about what homemade soaps or organic produce we are using around the home, but he is very candid about environmental issues in politics, pop culture, and even sporting events. He’s a smart guy. And like most smart guys, his view of the world is often a little wacky, which makes for some very interesting reading.
Like this week for example.
Steve poses a question that I’m not sure most ‘greenies’ would ask (or admit that they even think about). So the question is- Is Bush a climate change hero? Bizarre concept, but definitely worth the read!
Filed under Guest Bloggers | Comment (0)
