In just one week, CHEJ will be releasing the Safe School Siting Toolkit. But today we need your help in contacting your governor.

Help us reach our goal of sending 2,000 letters demanding safe school siting by Wed October 14.

This past year has been a whirlwind of school siting news:

♦ In December of 2008 USAToday released a series of articles that expose a national trend of building schools on or near sources of pollution.
♦ In March 2009, EPA announced that it would be testing 63 schools in 22 states for air contaminated and in April, the University of Iowa released a study stating that children that attended school within 10 -20 miles of superfund sites were nearly twice as likely to suffer from autism.
♦ In June 2009, EPA missed its congressionally mandated deadline to release national voluntary school siting guidelines, but added a stakeholder task group to help develop them by early 2010.
♦ Then just last week the chemical Acrolein was detected outside 15 public schools at very high levels by EPA air testing project. Acrolein causes eye and throat irratation and exacerbates asthma.

We need to take collective action. The National Safe School Siting Day of Action is taking place on October 14.

Help reach our goal of 2,000 people taking action for safe school siting by Wednesday October 14. We've already had 350 people send in letters, but we have a long way to go.

Thank you for taking action! It is only through collective action will we protect our children's health.

Source: Center for Health, Environment & Justice