The tragedy of 9/11 changed the way Americans live, work, and play. It also changed the way school administrators look at indoor air quality (IAQ) and its affect on schoolchildren and teachers. The disaster focused national attention on school IAQ when the New York City Board of Education (BOE) was forced to clean up the seven public schools in the impact zone of the World Trade Center tragedy.
The cleanup effort that followed the disaster was documented in a book titled Schools of Ground Zero: Early Lessons Learned in Children’s Environmental Health. The book was written by journalist Sarah Bartlett and architect John Petrarca, two parents in Lower Manhattan. The book was commissioned by Healthy Schools Network Inc. (HSN), Albany, N.Y., and co-published by the American Public Health Association (APHA) to tell the story of the seven public schools and 6,000 students near Ground Zero from a parent’s perspective.