"We found levels of pollutants in homes and child-care facilities that we should be concerned about," says Joseph Laquatra, associate professor of design and environmental analysis in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell. "Even low levels of exposure to some of these pollutants is dangerous, and if you have a child who lives in a home with high radon, lead and mold levels and then spends the day being exposed to those same pollutants in a child-care facility, that child may be at significantly higher risk for lead poisoning, cancer, asthma attacks and allergies."
Laquatra, who conducted the study with colleagues Lorraine Maxwell and Mark Pierce, both in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis with Laquatra at Cornell, will report these findings at the Ninth Annual International Conference on Indoor Air and Climate in Monterey, Calif., July 2.
The indoor environmental experts tested indoor air pollution levels in a representative sample of 328 houses and 75 child-care facilities in six nonmetropolitan counties (Chenango, Columbia, Essex, Franklin, Wyoming and Hamilton) in New York state.
They also found that the homes of lower income residents had higher levels of carbon monoxide, probably because 60 percent of the homes in the study had no functioning kitchen exhaust fan, the researchers said. In addition, 16 percent of the homes in the study had asbestos problems, and 10 percent had basement mold.
"Limited-resource households have disproportionate exposure to radon and other indoor air pollutants, most likely because of lower quality housing and housing deficiencies that create pollutant p
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Contact: Susan S. Lang
SSL4@cornell.edu
607-255-3613
Cornell University News Service
1-Jul-2002