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Day after day, your child comes home from school suffering from a headache, nausea, and a cough. After a few hours at home, he feels fine. If you suspect that indoor pollution at school is to blame, what signs do you look for? And if you find a problem at school, how can you fix it?

These and similar questions perplex parents, teachers, and school board members every day. To help provide some answers, the Canadian advocacy organizations Pollution Probe, the Technology and Health Foundation, and the Education Safety Association of Ontario have launched HealthySchools.com, an interactive Web site.

Common indoor pollutants such as mold, odors from perfumes and cleaning products, and volatile organic compounds that slowly evaporate from particle-board desks are common sources of health problems in schools. Bruce Small, executive director of the Technology and Health Foundation, says, "At least 15% of any population is chemically sensitive. That translates into many people in every school, whether students or staff." Children are at special risk from pollutants because, in proportion to their size, they breathe more air than do adults. Indoor air pollution is compounded by ventilation systems that aren't maintained because of lack of budget or staff or both, Small says.

HealthySchools.com is intended to provide a variety of practical information for teachers, parents, and others who must tackle school environmental problems on their own. Canadian schools are under the jurisdiction of the provinces, and no federal money is specifically allocated for improving schools' indoor environmental quality. "School boards have to find creative ways of solving problems," says Sandra Schwartz, manager of Pollution Probe's child health program. "HealthySchools.com is designed so that users can develop their own how-to manuals."

The Web site is divided into seven different areas, including case studies of specific schools, links to existing references such as "Tools for Schools" from the U.S. EPA, discussion groups, and topic pages on broad subjects such as common indoor pollutants or emission characteristics of paints. Visitors looking for specific facts can search the entire site by key word.

By creating a Web site rather than a brochure or other hard-copy resource, the site's creators hoped to make information about indoor air quality widely accessible and easily updated. "Every school has at least one computer in it," Small says. The site is also intended as a place to consolidate information about indoor air quality. "There's a lot of good information out there but we decided that we needed to make a focus for it," Small says. HealthySchools.com links to other sites that include related information, such as the U.S. EPA and the New York--based Healthy Schools Network, Inc.

HealthySchools.com is unique because it includes not only official guidelines but also unfiltered personal experiences. "The site includes information from federal governments all the way down to community-based stories," Schwartz says. "School boards need to hear what parents think, what children's experiences are. It's beneficial to learn about what didn't work as well as what did work."

With such knowledge, individuals can make dramatic improvements in school environments with little expense. "You can change for the better the atmosphere of the school overnight just by changing to low-odor cleaning products," Small says. For example, at one school, replacing an outdated ventilation system was cost-prohibitive, so a custodian took it upon himself to update the existing system at a much lower cost.

The creators of HealthySchools.com are still updating the site and are eager for visitors to submit case studies and personal experiences. Visitors may make suggestions for improvement by sending e-mail to [e-mail].