While school buses may be one of the safer ways to transport children too and from school, studies have shown that they might not be as safe as we once thought. According to a document produced by the Environmental Defense Fund, “air pollutant levels inside school buses can be greater than the ambient levels outside the bus.” This phenomenon has come to be known as ‘self-pollution,’ and it occurs most frequently when buses are idling. Diesel exhaust from school buses consists of fine particulate matter, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Consequences of inhaling these toxic pollutants can range from minor respiratory infections, to asthma, to conditions as severe as heart and lung disease. Unfortunately, children are exposed to high concentrations of these pollutants every day, and they are also the most vulnerable to these emissions because they are young and their bodies are still developing.
While there are many technical and expensive solutions to this problem, the most effective solutions have been to implement idling regulations for school buses. Most states have ‘recommended’ reduced-idling policies, which prohibit idling for longer than 5 minutes at one time. I argue that we can reduce children’s exposure to these hazardous pollutants by reducing idling regulations to 3 minutes or less, and making these regulations required.