Are kindergartens healthy enough for the children?

Environmental conditions in kindergartens are of particular concern because of the children's health. In this chapter, effects of environmental parameters and the airborne pollutants on children in kindergartens according to the available studies done by the researchers are criticized in light of the author's professional experience on the issue. Several parameters may impact children's health in kindergartens individually as well as altogether, which is called combined-exposure. These parameters are occupant number, climatic factors (e.g., temperature, relative humidity, air exchange rate, etc.), ventilation rate and type (i.e., mechanical or HVAC), indoor material (e.g., furniture, carpet, toys, papers, etc.) loading rate, socio-economic features, volume of the classroom, cleaning frequency, geographic conditions and season. It is noteworthy that they are merely parameters that can generally trigger the reactions, producing the main pollutants that have more serious adverse health effects on children as well as staff of the kindergartens. However, this chapter is focused on children in the kindergartens rather than adults. These pollutants can be classified by both their sources (i.e., primary pollutants and secondary pollutants) and their characteristics (i.e., organic pollutants, inorganic pollutants, microbiological pollutants, etc.). Levels and composition of the pollutants are used to specify the adequacy of the environment for children's health and development. Some pollutants have a much more serious effect with even low concentrations, such as formaldehyde, benzene and molds, while the significant impact of certain other pollutants has not been documented yet. In this chapter, all possible pollutants that may influence children will be tackled, such as microbial agents (e.g., molds, bacteria, endotoxin, MVOCs, dust mites, cockroach allergens, etc.), organic compounds (e.g., VOCs, aldehydes, SVOCs, etc.), radon, particles (e.g., PM10, PM2.5, sub-micron particles, settled dust, etc.), CO2 levels, and CO levels along with the parameters given above. Due to various reasons, kindergartens are an important environment for children. First of all, children in kindergartens are more susceptible to the effects of poor or bad environmental conditions than the adults as their immune system hasn't maturated yet and the ratio of total volume of the air (i.e., including higher concentrations of air pollutants) breathed by children and their body weight is higher than adults. Recently, the increased rate of asthma among children living in non-industrial areas has been pointed out by WHO and the national health organizations of some countries. Similarly, available results show us inadequate environmental conditions, especially bad indoor air quality, are linked with childhood asthma and respiratory symptoms. Another issue of concern is occupancy load (i.e., area per person) of the room, which induces many problems such as infection by close contact and increased CO2 levels by breathing in a limited space for approximately 8 hours. © 2010 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.