www.iamecowarrior.com in partnership with www.youtube.com/user/captainplanetfdn Troubled by the connection between poor air quality in her native city of Atlanta, Georgia and asthma rates in children, IAMECO Educator Laura Turner Seydel joined together with local mothers and leading public health, environmental and child advocacy organizations to form Mothers & Others for Clean Air. The partnership is dedicated to improving air quality for all Georgians by educating the public about the health effects of air pollution and engaging people in both individual change and public policy advocacy that will improve air quality. Transcript -- Laura Turner Seydel: Atlanta has some really bad outdoor air days. Eighteen percent of Atlanta's children have asthma; ten percent nationally, but it's higher in Georgia. We are the asthma capitol of the country. It's the number one reason why children miss school and the number one reason why parents miss work. And there's ways that we can limit susceptible population's exposure to bad outdoor air, but we have to be educated, we have to share the information, we have to come up with programs in schools that would keep kids inside on bad air days—they'd be outside exercising in the morning instead of the most polluted time of the day, which is later in the day. Until we can get policy right and our legislators to advocate for the children in our community, we're going to have to do it ourselves. Mothers and Others for Clean Air focused on cleaning up diesel burning school buses. We've retrofitted about 1200 in about twenty different school districts in Georgia. The diesel emissions are highly toxic and carcinogenic, so you don't want your kids sitting in a box filled with this really bad air—for a couple of hours a day, in some cases. And even if your child is not prone to having asthma, it still can make you nauseous and dizzy. We came together with the children's advocacy groups, the environmental groups and the human health groups. We built this coalition—I mean, coalitions are so important—bring all the stakeholders together. And when you do that, you can really identify low-hanging fruit. For us it was the diesel burning school buses and also educating school nurses and pediatricians and moms and everybody else about the importance of limiting exposure, and then we're also advocating for good policy. Find your eco Solution www.iamecowarrior.com Directed by Roger Moenks