Parents, teachers call for better air quality in schools amid wildfire, virus concerns

One of the best ways to protect kids and teachers against the dual threat of viruses and polluted air is better ventilation coupled with air filtration, air quality experts say.

Kate Laing’s family managed to avoid COVID-19 for more than two years.

When her oldest son went back to school last year, she said it only took three days for him to become infected and bring the virus home.

“He was masked, but he had to take his mask off to eat his lunch,” Laing said. “He’s sitting at a table with four other kids and one of them had COVID.”

Laing believes that’s the most likely source of his COVID-19 infection, and that cleaner air could have helped prevent it while the kids were unmasked.

Her son, now nine, has asthma which flares up when he gets sick. His younger brother, now almost three, also became infected and got very ill.

“We had gone without family, we had gone without friends, we had gone without everything. My youngest wasn’t even in daycare yet,” said Laing, who lives in Wilmot Township in the Waterloo, Ont., region.

“I was – I think, fairly understandably – really annoyed that this had been the situation that my family had been put in.”

Laing found other concerned parents, including an epidemiologist, who had formed a group called Ontario School Safety. She volunteered to help and is now the group’s chair.