According to the National Highway Transportation Authority, an average of 37 children die each year because someone leaves them unattended in a car in the sun. That is one child every nine days.

In almost every case, their adult was stressed and balancing a number of issues. They put the baby in the car seat in the back of the car, drove to their destination, but forgot to drop the baby off at daycare. As they worked in the office or chatted in the coffee shop with a friend, the temperature in the car rose, destroying the child’s life and devastating their own.

There are more than 22 million kids under five in America. If you saw any one of them alone in a hot car, I know you would call out for people to help and would leap into action.

This urgent response to the rising temperatures and humidity caused by Climate Change is not occurring. About half of our society is ignoring or denying its significant planetary warming. All 22 million kids under 5 years old are trapped in an environment that is heating up rapidly, there are proven ways to rescue them, but little action is being taken. Their otherwise-responsible caretakers are getting a cup of coffee.

It may surprise you to learn that one thing that contributes to the tragedy is the color of the car the child was left in. If there were two kids in identical cars, but one car was painted black and the other painted white, the black car would heat up more quickly and become as much as 17 degrees hotter than the white car. And the child would suffer.

We are essentially painting our planet black by releasing gasses that attract and trap heat just like black car paint. By now you have heard a lot about the increasing amounts of “greenhouse gasses” being released by cars, industry, and electrical generation. What you probably do not know is that these gasses do not float up, up, and away. They stay in a layer close to the earth’s surface – and warm our entire planet, like black paint on a car. The layer averages only around 36,000 feet (six-and-a-half miles) thick. The top of that layer is roughly the same height above the earth that you flew in your last airplane ride. When you were looking out the airplane window, you were looking at the top of the layer of climate changing gases.

This layer (shown here in white) is like a blanket made from a lot of different chemicals. These modern chemicals are all around you. They are emitted by your car, your leaking refrigerator or air conditioning unit, cow farts, or the gas pipe heating your home and water - and all of them keep concentrating into the same limited space, increasing the trapping of heat, and threatening the lives of people below.

One of the most challenging chemicals for our nation to control is the cooling gas that leaks from your air conditioning or refrigerators. These gasses can be thousands of times more climate changing than CO2. And the equipment they work in often leaks.

There are only 209 coal-fired electrical generation stations in America, all are inspected regularly, and enforcement action is taken by both federal and state agencies if regulations are broken. There are 110 million households that have air conditioning, nearly 100,000 K-12 school buildings, and millions more businesses, retirement homes, office buildings, and so forth. Once a new air-conditioning unit is installed and approved by local officials, depending on where you live, there are weak or no legal requirements that they be inspected for leaks and that the leaks be reported.

There is a substantial chance that many of the nearly 100,000 public schools in America--and the 2,731 in North Carolina--are leaking refrigerant gasses. This is because when a leak occurs, if it is found, the school system has to choose between two options:

1. Fixing or replacing the equipment, which is called a “capital expense:” Because of North Carolina law, unlike many other states, paying for capital expenses is the responsibility of the local government or school district; or
2. Simply replacing the lost fluids and putting a short-term patch on the leak: This is called an “operating expense” and the state funds much of that.

So, school systems short of capital funding will simply replace the leaked gas, and charge it to the state--a choice that can be many thousands of times more climate-changing than CO2.  If your school's electric bill seems to be climbing, you can call an air conditioning company to do an inspection and replace any leaking gasses. They are not obliged to permanently fix the leak.

One creative group which is trying to solve this problem is the Environmental Investigation Agency, an independent non-profit organization. They did a wonderful examination of 45 grocery stores, including Albertsons, Safeway, ALDI, Whole Foods, Costco, Kroger, Harris Teeter, Target, and Trader Joes’s. More than half of the stores investigated had refrigerant leaks detectable where customers shop. You can see much more of their powerful findings in their report called Leaking Havoc.

If you want to help “make the invisible visible,” our partner organization, The Pollution Detectives, Inc., will loan to you (for free) an easy-to-use meter that sniffs out leaks. You point it, listen to the beeps indicating a leak, and move the tip of the tube wherever the noise gets louder.

We are about to enter the hottest summer on record, and everyone must do whatever they can to rescue the kids. Rescuing can start by making the invisible visible.

Hurry.

A Compelling Case and an "Urgent Need"

for Education Funding

This spring, as the U.S. Congress negotiated spending priorities and cuts in the Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget, members from both the Senate and House of Representatives composed, signed, and sent a letter to the powerful chairs of the Appropriations Committees. The letter explained reasons for and requested $100 million to continue the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Program in the Environmental Protection Agency's Indoor Environment Division. Twenty members of the Senate and 30 members of the House endorsed the letter.

These excerpts summarize, with compelling clarity, the "urgent need" confronting educators.

Dear Chair... and Ranking Member...,

As you prepare the Committee’s Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations bill, we are writing to respectfully request that you include $100 million for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Indoor Environments Division (IED) of the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (ORIA) to protect school children and personnel from unhealthy environments in schools and childcare facilities.

As you know, school environmental health is an urgent need that demands a broad sustained response. Over twenty years of published research has shown that indoor environmental exposure to pollutants can be more intense than outdoor exposures and that school facilities have been neglected for decades. These are problems affecting children and their families/caretakers, particularly in communities most in need, and affecting personnel, the health care system, and schools themselves. Poor indoor environments in schools decrease seat time, attendance and test scores, and increase asthma and other health events, and thus increase health costs. It is clear that there is a significant need to educate, train, and encourage schools and childcare facilities on child-safe and effective preventive management of facilities...

EPA’s Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Tools for Schools program is well-positioned to address these problems by providing the outreach, guidance, and tools that schools need to effectively address the multiple factors that impact indoor air quality. Thus, we request the inclusion of the following report language in support of EPA’s IAQ Tools for Schools program:

Indoor Air Quality in Schools – The Committee recognizes the importance of safe and healthy learning environments, which includes access to clean indoor air. Poor indoor air quality can impede a child’s learning ability and expose students and school personnel to serious health risks. The Committee supports the Agency’s comprehensive Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Tools for Schools program and the ongoing grant programs to improve indoor environmental quality in schools. The Committee provides $100 million for technical assistance and science-based resources on implementing source reduction strategies, sustainable ventilation, filtration and other indoor air quality improvements for healthy school environments.

Thank you for your consideration of our request...

With its free lending library of indoor air quality monitors, our partner organization, The Pollution Detectives, Inc., has long sought to assist educators in identifying and correcting poor indoor conditions for students and teachers. We invite you to read more about this opportunity below.