Protective equipment and health education program could benefit students from dust pollution

In recent years, children living in the downstream of the Choshui River in Taiwan have been exposed to violent dust episodes. For the sake of the health of these children, we aimed to investigate the effectiveness of protective equipment (sand-proof plastic cover and air purifier) installed outside/inside the classrooms on students' pulmonary function and evaluate the health education program for preventing the adverse consequences of exposure to river-dust episodes. Public elementary school students in Yunlin County, which was severely affected by river-dust, were selected as the participants. Study 1 consisted of three-wave follow-up data (801 person-times) in high-/low-dust exposure regions to examine pulmonary function. Study 2 used 147 and 73 students in the high-/low-dust exposure regions, respectively, to establish our health education intervention. Paired t tests, repeated measures ANOVA, and generalized estimating equation were used to analyze the short- and long-term effects. The results showed that the students' pulmonary function in schools that installed protective equipment was improved. The health education (such as the usage of correct masks and our designed PM_2.5 full-cover sand-proof clothing) improved the students' cognition and behaviors related to river-dust episodes and yielded both short- and long-term effects. Therefore, we suggest more schools with high-dust exposure to adopt protective equipment and health education program. Our designed PM_2.5 full-cover sand-proof clothing can prevent from not only haze but also droplet transmission by infectious diseases such as COVID-19.