Forbidden Fumes (You can click here for the full article)

Idling cars, buses pose danger to children

from GETTING AROUND By Shaun Sutner TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The next time you pick up your child at school, make sure to turn off your engine.

That goes double for school bus drivers.

State law bans all vehicles from idling for more than five minutes, unless it is absolutely necessary, as in the case of police cruisers or refrigerated trucks.

In recent years, state environmental officials have cracked down on bus companies and school districts that have flouted the law by operating buses that spew noxious diesel exhaust into schoolyards, entranceways and even classrooms through air intakes that draw fumes inside school buildings.

The state has also been working with school districts and bus companies to get them to install particulate filters on buses and to upgrade fleets to less-polluting “clean diesel” engines.

Every year, children in the United States spend 3 billion hours riding 600,000 school buses, which transport 24 million students, according to the New England Asthma Regional Council in Boston. Many of them are subjected to diesel particles that have been classified as human carcinogens and pollutants by the World Health Organization and the federal government.

“This is a very important issue,” said Laurie Stillman, executive director of the asthma council. “School districts should retrofit their school buses.”

In 2005, the state fined 11 bus companies for excessive idling, including Central Massachusetts-based McCarthy and Sons for a violation at the Dawson Elementary School in Holden.

Lately, the Department of Environmental Protection has been taking a softer approach, awarding small grants to communities and school systems to help them, and parents, comply with the law.

These “idling reduction toolkits” include brochures, signs and other educational materials that schools can use to cut down on idling.

In Central Massachusetts, Marlboro and Hopkinton were among 21 communities statewide that got anti-idling money last month under a $1 million round of grants to help towns and cities deal with climate change, prevent pollution and improve recycling. The idling awards are generally around $500 to $1,000 and are combined with other environmental grants; Marlboro, for example, got a total of $18,000.

DEP officials said they are not really trying to enforce the idling law against individual drivers, some of whom may be warming up their SUVs too long in the driveway (although that is technically illegal). Neither are they coming down hard so much on private buses and commercial trucks that idle illegally. That daunting task is generally handled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Edmund Coletta, spokesman for the DEP, said the agency is trying to renew a focus on a serious environmental problem that has never gone away.

“It’s never really been thought of as an important thing to do,” Mr. Coletta said, referring to the necessity of complying with the law. “But children are especially vulnerable to pollution from diesel engines.”

Mr. Coletta refuted the notion that some drivers feel it necessary to keep bus engines and heating systems running, particularly in winter, so children don’t climb into a frigid bus.

“That’s just a fallacy. Especially with today’s diesel engines, buses warm up right away,” he said.

In Worcester, school transportation officials concede that buses may technically be in violation of the five-minute law when they warm up in the morning in the bus yard.

But drivers, who have been trained by the DEP and in once-a-year in-house sessions, are strictly instructed to turn their engines off at schools, with the exception of some special education buses that may need to be at a specific temperature for children with medical needs, they say.

“Our policy is what the state law is,” said John P. Hennessey Jr., director of transportation for Worcester public schools. “They should not be unnecessarily idling in front of a building. Inevitably, it’s a loading zone where air intakes into a building. Not to say every one always complies, but when we find out about one, we go right after that driver.”

Mr. Hennessey added that, in the mornings, buses customarily are turned on while drivers run through a daily “circle check” of safety features such as directional signals, brakes and other parts of the vehicle.

“It only takes 10 minutes,” he said. “You get into a discussion about what is necessary.”

Mr. Hennessey maintained that parents idling their vehicles when they arrive early to stake out a spot are also a problem. As for putting up signs to alert parents to the anti-idling law, many would complain about “sign pollution,” he said.

There are indications that unneeded idling is less prevalent than in the past.

In Westboro, where school committee member Bruce Tretter has crusaded for years to improve indoor air quality in schools, awareness has improved dramatically, Mr. Tretter said.

“They’ve been doing better,” said Mr. Tretter, a writer who works at home. “The whole thing is complying with the law. It’s tough when it gets cold.”