The Yellow School Bus Needs a Green Makeover

When John Wargo’s daughter was 12 years old, he started sending her off to school as any loving father would: He strapped her up to an air quality monitor, walked her to the school bus, and told her to measure the toxic diesel emissions she was bound to inhale.

Her father, an environmental scientist and professor at Yale, hoped to learn about the diesel emissions her bus pumped out, and how long she and her classmates were being exposed to carcinogens. It turned out to be quite a lot. Over the next several months, he affixed monitors onto 14 other students, and published a report of his findings, Children’s Exposure to Diesel Exhaust on School Buses, in 2002. Kids who rode the school bus were breathing in five to 15 times more particulates than they would have been otherwise.