In Plain Breath
What Dirty Air Is Doing To All Of Us
Achoo.
An eyebrow raises. A mom glances at her child. The spiral begins.
Is it just a cold? Something viral? Should I call another parent—did their kid come back from that birthday party sick too?
Escalation kicks in—mental and physical. Lysol. Clorox. Mask. A day off school. Do I need to cancel work? Will the other kid get it too? Should we call off the trip? The school play? Skip seeing the grandparents?
Everyone knows this spiral—even if they don’t have kids—because they’ve lived it.
So what’s a sneeze, really?
A sneeze used to mean something.
Not just a tickle in your nose—but a sign of plague, evil spirits, or your soul slipping out of your body. That’s why we say “bless you.” A centuries-old reflex of protection, whispered across cultures like a prayer against invisible threats.
Today, the threats are still invisible— but far more real than we care to admit.
Kids are coughing through class, missing school in waves, coming back with infections no one is tracking.
Chronic absenteeism is up. Test scores are down. Parents are left blaming snacks, screens, or sleep routines.
But maybe the real problem… is still in the air.
So what’s the common thread?
It’s not smartphones. It’s not social media. It’s not even AI (yet). It’s something more basic. Something we all inhale.
Every. Single. Day.
The Escalation Happens Quickly
It started with a cough.
A wet, rattly one that showed up on Tuesday afternoons like clockwork. The kind that makes you glance around the school pickup line and wonder who else heard it. Just a persistent tickle that disrupts snack time, sleep, and focus.
No fever. No positive test. “Probably just a bug,” they said.
By the third week, a teacher is out. Then the sub. Then the nurse.
Then the silence.
We blame “this season.” “That new variant.” We buy more hand sanitizer. Switch to low-sugar snacks. Wash lunchboxes every night. But the cough keeps coming back. Then the reading scores drop. Then the stomachaches start. Then the attendance letters show up in the mail.
At first, the blame turns inward.
Too much screen time? Not enough sleep? The wrong cereal?
What are we missing?
Step into the school building, and the air hits like a wall- stale, thick, heavy. It smells like mildew and warm printer ink. Five minutes later, a headache blooms behind the eyes and lingers until dinner.
No one sets out to become an expert on air.
Most are just trying to get their kid through second grade. But late at night—past midnight, when worry becomes research—search histories fill with quiet desperation: mold symptoms in children, why does my kid keep coughing, school air quality headache.
And what they find changes everything.
Studies linking indoor air to test scores. Reports connecting poor ventilation to teacher burnout. Evidence showing that cleaner classrooms mean higher attendance, fewer behavioral issues—even lower rates of school violence.
This isn't just one family’s story.
It’s every child. Every parent. Every teacher who went home early. Every child who never got tested for asthma but missed 30 days of school.
We talk a lot about what’s “fair,” what’s “equitable,” what’s “evidence-based.”
But no one talks about the fact that kids are trying to grow while breathing microplastics, mold spores, and carbon dioxide levels that would flag a commercial building for OSHA violations.
So the digging continues.
CO₂ levels in some classrooms regularly exceed 1,500 ppm. Focus begins to falter at 1,000 (ALA, 2025a; Indoor Air Care Advocates, 2023).
PM2.5 particles—linked to lung and heart disease—circulate in schools at levels higher than the EPA recommends (ALA, 2025a; Bruns et al., 2023).
VOCs from furniture, markers, and cleaning supplies trigger nausea, headaches, even hormone disruption (ALA, 2025a).
Microplastics are found in classroom dust—embedding themselves in developing lungs and brains before puberty even hits (Abbasi et al., 2022).
Most parents aren’t scientists. But they can read a trendline. And this one?
It points to early burnout. Widening disability. A workforce that never gets to fully form.
A generation raised in buildings that are slowly poisoning them.
The Numbers Don’t Lie. They Just Hurt.
Thirteen million school days are lost every year to one chronic childhood illness. One.
That illness is asthma—and it’s also one of the top reasons parents miss work.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asthma causes an estimated 13.8 million absences annually among children aged 5–17. In most schools, that’s not just a line item—it’s a crisis (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024a).
According to Dr. Gigi Gronvall of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who spoke directly with us for this article:
“Asthma is found everywhere, but it disproportionally affects children from low-income neighborhoods. In some places, like in Baltimore City, asthma rates are several times the national average, and it is severely underdiagnosed. In addition to the health effects, there are other impacts as well. When children with asthma need medical care, they miss school, caregivers miss work, and the uncertainty makes it especially hard for caregivers to hold jobs.”
In some U.S. schools, 60% of student absences are caused by illness. And the majority of those illnesses? Respiratory.
This isn’t speculation—it’s documented in district reports, verified by Attendance Works, and echoed in every teacher lounge and nurse’s office from Baltimore to Bakersfield (Attendance Works, 2024; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024b; Bruns et al., 2023).
Students in polluted classrooms perform as if their IQ dropped 5 to 10 points—and not metaphorically.
This is what happens when children breathe air contaminated with fine particulate matter (PM2.5), elevated carbon dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. Symptoms like drowsiness, reduced concentration, and headaches aren’t just nuisances—they’re measurable barriers to learning (Rivera et al., 2025; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024c).
Teachers and staff aren’t exempt. In fact, they’re burning out faster than ever.
Even when you control for salary and workload, schools with poor indoor air quality show higher staff sick leave, faster turnover, and greater job dissatisfaction. The air is literally driving people out of classrooms (American Lung Association, 2025d).
And perhaps most disturbing of all: A typical child breathes 2 to 3 times more frequently than an adult. And they spend over 1,200 hours per year inside buildings where the air is two to five times more polluted than outside.
That’s more exposure, more vulnerability, and more permanent damage—before puberty even begins (PEHSU, 2024; NCES, 2009; U.S. EPA, 2014).
If any private company exposed kids to this level of risk, we’d call it a scandal. But in public schools, we call it Monday.
Even the Feds Are Paying Attention
You don’t have to agree with the administration. You don’t have to like the name of the campaign. But if the federal government—including the EPA, FDA, NIH, and CDC—is telling us to look up from our smartphones and actually pay attention to kids’ health?
It’s worth perking up for.
This year, under Executive Order 14212, the White House launched the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission. Its newly released report doesn’t tiptoe. It names the problem.
“Children are exposed to synthetic chemicals through the air they breathe, the food they eat, and the water they drink.” (Make America Healthy Again Commission, 2025, Section 2).
That includes indoor air. And it includes schools.
The report calls out that while air pollution has dropped nationally over the last few decades—thanks to EPA regulation—childhood chronic disease has gotten worse. Why?
Because the exposures are still happening. Because outdated safety standards are being treated like guarantees. The Commission also highlights that children are uniquely vulnerable—not just because of size, but because of biology:
Their lungs are developing. Their immune systems are immature. Their breathing rates are higher. Their classrooms are often filled with dust, off-gassed chemicals, and contaminants from decades-old HVAC systems.
The White House didn’t mince words: environmental threats—from “toxic material” to indoor air quality—are now part of a federal risk framework. It’s all right there, under the mandate of EO 14212.
This isn’t about red or blue.
It’s about a generation of children being quietly damaged by the very places meant to protect and prepare them.
What Does It Impact? Everything.
We treat indoor air like an afterthought. But it’s the invisible infrastructure that supports—or sabotages—everything else.
Let’s start with school itself.
When the air in a classroom is full of mold, microplastics, and poorly filtered particulates, it doesn't just make kids cough. It makes them absent. It makes them anxious. It makes it harder to think, focus, behave, or learn.
Poor indoor air quality contributes to:
Chronic absenteeism—driven by asthma, upper respiratory infections, headaches, nausea, and fatigue (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024a; American Lung Association, 2025c)
Lower test scores—linked to elevated CO₂, PM2.5, and poor ventilation (Rivera et al., 2025; Bruns et al., 2023; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024c)
Higher rates of school-based violence—with studies linking heat and poor air circulation to increased aggression and behavioral disruption (American Lung Association, 2025c)
Widening mental health challenges—due to environmental stressors on developing brains and nervous systems (American Lung Association, 2025d; U.S. EPA, 2024c)
But this doesn’t stop at the school gate.
Every day a child is too sick to attend class, a parent is forced to miss work. The U.S. already loses billions annually in parental productivity costs from child illness. And that’s before we account for the downstream economic losses from lower graduation rates, reduced cognitive development, and the emergence of chronic disease and disability in youth (Bruns et al., 2023).
Teachers and staff aren’t exempt either. Poor air quality contributes to higher sick leave, faster burnout, and increased turnover, especially in underserved districts (American Lung Association, 2025d). When we lose teachers, we lose continuity, stability, and mentorship—things children need as much as curriculum.
This isn’t just an education crisis. It’s a workforce pipeline crisis. It’s a healthcare cost crisis. It’s an HR crisis.
Air quality is a silent employee benefit—one that too many districts are failing to deliver.
Meanwhile, mental health indicators are worsening across the board. The combination of poor air, infection risk, noise, and instability has created an ecosystem that fosters anxiety, dysregulation, and despair—especially among children already living with chronic stress.
And we cannot ignore the elephant in the room: long-term immune damage from repeated viral infections. Despite record-high absenteeism and surges in RSV, strep A, norovirus, pneumonia, and more, public messaging continues to center blame on "immunity debt"—a concept originally meant to explain a single season of illness, now stretched past plausibility.
As health journalist Julia Doubleday writes in The Gauntlet:
“If we were to see immune damage manifesting at a population level, it would look like what we’re seeing today: big waves of common illnesses. Unusual spikes of uncommon illnesses. Course reversal for previously declining and eliminated illnesses.” (Doubleday, 2025).
Scientific evidence continues to build for post-COVID immune dysregulation, including impacts to T cells, dendritic cells, and the complement system. Reinfection is not rare. It's the new baseline.
And without clean air?
That baseline doesn’t shift. It entrenches.
COVID: The Layer No One Wants to Talk About
We want to believe it’s over.
That COVID was a temporary detour. That kids bounced back. That schools "went back to normal." But biology doesn’t care about our narratives. And the data says otherwise.
In Merced County, California, chronic absenteeism hit 40% after schools reopened in 2022. That wasn’t because the kids didn’t want to come back. It was because they couldn’t. Wastewater surveillance showed clear correlations with recurring COVID waves—and students were the frontline (Rosas, 2025).
And when students stayed out, some districts responded not with support—but with punishment. In Merced, absenteeism warrants were issued to families. But as Dr. Maria Roussos warns, these kids weren’t skipping—they were suffering. The real issue wasn’t parental neglect. It was undiagnosed Long COVID.
“We’re seeing fatigue. Gastrointestinal issues. Anxiety. Sleep disturbances. Immune dysregulation. These kids aren’t lazy. They’re sick.” (Rosas, 2025).
Long COVID in children is still under-recognized, often misattributed to anxiety, sleep hygiene, or “adjustment issues.” But clinicians are seeing the pattern: repeat infections, lingering symptoms, poor recovery, immune fallout (Penn Medicine, 2025).
And the numbers don’t lie. According to a JAMA Pediatrics publication from May 2025, Long COVID may affect 10% to 20% of children who’ve had the virus—amounting to nearly 6 million kids. That’s more than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic condition in U.S. youth (Gross et al., 2025).
These aren’t rare cases. They’re underdiagnosed ones. And it’s unfolding inside classrooms with no consistent air quality monitoring, no mitigation standards, and no federal enforcement. And the symptoms aren’t uniform.
A 2025 study from NYU Grossman School of Medicine—one of the first to examine Long COVID in children under five—found that over 40% of toddlers and preschoolers who had COVID exhibited at least one prolonged symptom. Toddlers showed more fussiness, poor appetite, and sleep disturbances, while preschoolers experienced daytime fatigue and persistent dry cough. The authors concluded that “a one-size-fits-all approach to screening for Long COVID across the lifespan is not possible and will likely need to be tailored for specific age groups. (Simmons, 2025)
The argument that kids are “resilient” falls apart under the microscope. So does the idea that COVID in children was always “mild and done.” Clinical evidence is mounting: invisible biological damage is real, measurable, and lasting.
We don’t yet know how COVID will shape the future neurodevelopment of children. We don’t yet know how many infections it takes to tip a healthy immune system into chronic illness. We don’t yet know the full cost to cognitive function, emotional regulation, or lifelong disability rates.
As Dr. Roussos points out, the right comparison isn’t the flu—it’s measles. Measles is infamous not just for its acute symptoms, but for immune amnesia and long-term sequelae. COVID shows signs of acting the same way. But unlike measles, we don’t have 50 years of research yet (Rosas, 2025).
We are living the experiment in real time. And without basic protections like portable air filters, far UVC, ventilation upgrades, MERV-13 filters, and indoor air quality monitoring, we are trapping children in a feedback loop of reinfection and slow damage—one that school systems are neither tracking nor prepared to manage.
COVID didn’t disappear. It just faded from the headlines. But in the lungs, the nervous systems, and the immune cells of millions of children—it’s still here.
Dr. Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard, argues that we’re entering “the Healthy Buildings Era”—a time when indoor air quality must be treated as essential infrastructure. In his 2023 TEDxBoston talk, Allen outlines five foundational shifts: acknowledging airborne transmission as the dominant mode of respiratory illness, designing ventilation standards around health outcomes (not just comfort), adopting real-time air quality monitoring, rejecting the false tradeoff between clean air and energy efficiency, and raising public awareness. “It’s time to clear the air in the room,” he says—literally and figuratively. (Allen, 2023, 00:05:18)
Education: What’s Out There?
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to examine it.
There is no shortage of research, expert consensus, or public health guidance on indoor air quality and its direct impact on child health. What’s missing isn’t the science—it’s the political will and public awareness.
In 2025, a global expert consensus published in the Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials brought together 179 clinicians, researchers, and patients across 28 countries.
The conclusion was unequivocal: Long COVID is real. It is underdiagnosed. It is functionally impairing. And it demands urgent attention—particularly in children.
The consensus calls for immediate investment in air quality monitoring and mitigation in schools, stating clearly that prevention requires more than optimism. It requires ventilation, sustained action, and a collective will to act before the damage becomes permanent (Ewing et al., 2025).
The American Lung Association (ALA) has already laid out the path.
They’ve created evidence-based, accessible resources that help school leaders, teachers, and parents understand what’s in the air and what they can do about it. Their guides include step-by-step instructions for creating Energy Efficient IAQ Management Plans, explain how poor air affects test scores and staff retention, and highlight tools for both prevention and response (American Lung Association, 2025b, 2025c, 2025d).
The information is there. The resources exist.
So what can we do while we wait for policy to catch up?
We can start by asking questions:
Does your school have an IAQ Management Plan?
Do teachers know the signs of poor air quality—and how to respond?
Has your district conducted a recent HVAC assessment?
Are portable HEPA filters in use? If not, why not?
We can start by opening windows, where possible. We can start by checking CO₂ levels, even with low-cost sensors. We can start by educating science teachers and student clubs about what clean air means—and letting them help collect data. We can start by talking about this at PTA meetings, school board sessions, union gatherings, and pediatric check-ups.
Because change doesn’t happen from the top down.
It happens when enough of us stop treating air like a background condition—and start naming it for what it is:
A public health priority.
An educational equity issue.
A fixable crisis hiding in plain breath.
As Dr. William Bahnfleth, Chair of the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force and lead author of the newly established Standard 241, put it:
“Awareness is a starting point, and there are lots of good resources on the causes and effects of poor IAQ and ways to achieve better IAQ. Unfortunately, awareness doesn’t necessarily stimulate action. I think the public has an important role to play in making authorities at all levels — from the school board to Congress — aware that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed. That includes advocating for reasonable regulation of IAQ in operation. Someone having dinner in a restaurant should be able to know that the air quality is good just as they can tell whether the kitchen has passed inspection.” (Bahnfleth, 2024, para. 6)
School Indoor Air Quality Fact Sheets series created by ASHRAE and the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council
The Plan: Clean Air Isn’t Complicated. It’s a Choice.
We don’t need a miracle.
We need a plan. One that works within the reality of strained school budgets, delayed federal action, and exhausted parents.
This isn’t about theory—it’s about implementation. Here’s what we can do right now to make the air safer for every student in America.
1. Accept Donations from Vetted, Evidence-Backed Sources
Let families contribute—the right way. We trust them with bake sales, field trips, and fundraisers. Why not portable air purifiers (HEPA or CR Boxes) and UV lights to reduce / eliminate pathogens in our classrooms? Schools should create centralized pathways to accept and deploy donated portable air filter, Far UV lights, and HVAC upgrades, guided by publicly available CDC, EPA, and ASHRAE standards. This ensures districts get what they need, not junk science or false promises.
And it works.
A 2025 pragmatic controlled trial in Chile found that air purifiers, even when built locally, significantly reduced PM2.5 levels and improved both lung function and cognitive performance in classrooms. Students demonstrated measurable improvements in memory, problem-solving, and attention, all at minimal cost (Rivera et al., 2025).
This isn’t experimental anymore. It’s replicable. It’s scalable. It’s ready.
2. Tap Into Federal and Foundation Funding
There are billions of dollars earmarked for school IAQ, environmental health, and pandemic prevention—and most of it is untouched. The Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and numerous foundations have IAQ-related grant programs. Far UV lights, portable HEPA filters/air purifiers, HVAC upgrades, monitoring equipment, and IAQ audits are all eligible expenses.
Schools should be applying. Advocates should be demanding transparency. Districts should stop leaving this money on the table.
Need a starting point? The Efficient and Healthy Schools Campaign (EHSC) offers free expert consultation to schools in America, especially those in low-income neighborhoods. There is no excuse for inaction (Indoor Air Care Advocates, 2023).
3. Introduce a Modest Family-Level IAQ Fee
If your child’s school asked for $20 to help fund filtered air in their classroom—would you say no? An annual $20–$50 IAQ fee per family—modeled after PTA dues or classroom supply requests—would give communities both skin in the game and sustainable funding. Collected and managed at the school or district level, these fees could cover:
Ongoing filter replacement
Low-cost CO₂ monitors
Emergency mitigation during viral surges
Simple HVAC maintenance
Far UV light fixtures in the classroom
This model isn’t just theoretical—it’s backed by economic research.
A 2025 cost-effectiveness study of combined pest control and air filtration in schools found that the intervention cost just $12.21 per student and delivered major health and economic benefits, including reduced asthma-related absences and fewer emergency visits. The cost-effectiveness ratio was $19,667 per QALY (quality-adjusted life year)—well below typical U.S. public health investment thresholds, which often range from $50,000 to $100,000 per QALY (Socolovsky et al., 2025).
For reference: one sick day costs most parents more than that.
This isn't a burden. It's a bargain.
Adam Van Bavel’s petition said it clearly: our kids are sick, the air is filthy, and the government is stalling. This article isn’t a softer version of that truth. It’s the sharper one—because the greatest tragedy isn’t just what’s happening. It’s how preventable it all is.
How This Plan Solves the Problem
Remember that cough? The one that started showing up every Tuesday afternoon? The one that spiraled into stomachaches, missed tests, and the quiet, creeping erosion of a second grader’s confidence?
That child isn’t unique.
It’s just one of millions. And that spiral isn’t inevitable. It’s preventable—with air. Clean indoor air isn’t just about physical health.
It changes everything.
It improves focus, memory, emotional regulation, and learning outcomes. It reduces absences, asthma attacks, and emergency room visits. It offers teachers a safer, healthier workplace—one they’re more likely to stay in. (American Lung Association, 2025d; Rivera et al., 2025; Socolovsky et al., 2025).
In one of the first randomized controlled trials of its kind, researchers in Milan asked a simple question:
What happens when you just improve the air?
They studied five primary schools. Nearly 2,000 students. 95 classrooms. Forty-three classrooms received portable air purifiers with ULPA (U15) filters—filters even more efficient than standard HEPA. The others didn’t. They ran the experiment for an entire academic year.
The results?
Absences dropped by 12.5%—that’s 1.3 more days in school, per student, every year.
PM2.5 levels fell by 32%, a major win for child lung development.
The benefit-cost ratio was 9.6—for every €1 spent, there was €9.60 in societal value returned (Renna et al., 2025; Le Page, 2025).
Let that sink in.
One dollar invested in a classroom air purifier returns nearly ten in benefits—through better attendance, stronger health, and a more reliable learning environment. This isn’t just a moral argument. It’s an economic one. A workforce one. A national resilience one.
We don’t need to wait for a moonshot. We need airflow. We don’t need to invent a new app. We need filters and leadership.
This is not an unsolvable problem. This is the problem we solve first—because everything else builds on it.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The stage has already been set.
The federal government, through the MAHA Commission, has acknowledged what so many parents, teachers, and pediatricians have felt for years: that the air our children breathe is not neutral. It’s a vector—for opportunity or for harm.
We now know that viral particles—invisible, airborne—can linger in crowded classrooms and lead to respiratory infections. Sometimes mild. Sometimes not. Sometimes even life-threatening.
Sometimes leaving scars we only recognize in hindsight.
We’ve seen what happens when a breath is taken for granted. When a sudden infection closes the throat of the seemingly healthy, or the air we assumed was safe turns out to be fatal.
These moments don’t come with warning labels. They just come. And they take.
Most people don’t think about air quality until it hits their family. Just like most surgeons didn’t wash their hands before delivering babies—until they learned what invisible transmission really meant. The germs were there. They were always there.
We just hadn’t trained our eyes to see them.
We often ignore the things we can’t see, touch, hear, or smell. But those are the things that shape us most. Those are the things that break us—silently.
So ask yourself: Do we keep waiting? Waiting for the next infection? The next unexplained illness? The next child to fall behind—or not come back at all?
Or do we act now—before the damage shows up on an X-ray, in a test score, or at a funeral?
We have the data. We have the tools. We have the moral obligation.
The air is whispering us the truth.
It’s time we started listening.
***
References:
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28. Van Bavel, A. (2025). Demand improved air quality in Baltimore public schools to protect our children [Petition]. Change.org. https://www.change.org/p/demand-improved-air-quality-in-baltimore-public-schools-to-protect-our-children