Some days, it seems as if your child spends almost as much time at school as she does at home. As a parent, you worry about whether she does her homework, understands her lessons, and gets along with her classmates.

But should you be concerned about whether her school building is making her sick? The federal government, in a 1995 study, found that half of the nation's schools have poor ventilation and significant sources of pollution inside the buildings. For children with asthma, particularly, indoor pollutants can be a problem.

What Is Sick School Syndrome?
When a building has indoor air problems, it is known as a sick building. Sick building syndrome (SBS) has gotten a lot of attention in the past decade or so, and it's no surprise that "sick schools" have also been put in the spotlight. When a school is deemed sick, it means that the people inside experience health problems that have no other obvious cause and that these symptoms or problems disappear or improve when they leave the building.

There are no strict criteria for diagnosing sick school syndrome; health experts make a diagnosis by examining the child and assessing whether her symptoms seem related to entering or leaving the school building. Sick school syndrome is often wrongly blamed for several illnesses and disorders ranging from winter flu outbreaks to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Therefore, it is important for health experts to look for other explanations for a child's symptoms before attributing them to the school environment.

Sick school syndrome is different from building-related illness (BRI), which is any illness that is associated with a building but that can be specifically diagnosed as caused by an identifiable biological or chemical agent. People who have BRI develop an illness related to something specific in the building, and they usually require time to recover from (or sometimes to develop symptoms of) the illness. Examples of building-related illnesses include carbon monoxide poisoning; asbestos, lead, or mercury poisoning; or legionnaires' disease.

Another similar illness is known as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). People with MCS get sick when they come into close contact with certain substances, including tobacco smoke, formaldehyde, pesticides, and other pollutants that don't significantly affect most other people. MCS is considered a chemical hypersensitivity or allergy.

With sick school syndrome, usually many people become ill, not just one. And the illness is not caused by a specifically identifiable factor; for example, if several kids get sick after a spill in chemistry class, it is not considered to be due to sick school syndrome.

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