News Releases from Region 01

EPA Awards $25K Grant to Lewiston, Maine Non-profit for Indoor Air Quality Efforts

BOSTON – A non-profit in Lewiston, Maine, has received $25,000 from the US Environmental Protection Agency to reduce health threats caused by poor indoor air quality, including radon indoors, mold and secondhand smoke.

Healthy Androscoggin received the funds from EPA's Healthy Homes program for a program that will reduce the negative health effects posed by poor indoor air, specifically targeting refugees and immigrants in public housing.

The program, called "Expanding Innovative Healthy Homes Education for Immigrants and Refugees in Lewiston-Auburn," plans to use the funding to expand their class offerings to include education on environmental health hazards in the home as well as create lessons tailored to their immigrant and refugee populations.

The group plans to build on its current lead poisoning prevention course and create a new curriculum, which includes indoor air quality and asthma triggers in indoor environments, strives to improve indoor air quality in public housing for immigrant populations in the region. These communities have launched a project to make affordable housing for immigrants environmentally safe and free of asthma triggers as well as free of other dangerous indoor air pollutants, such as lead, second hand tobacco smoke, radon, and volatile organic compounds.

More EPA information on Indoor Air Quality (www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/introduction-indoor-air-quality)