New Health and Safety Management Tools Empower Schools in Media Storms

Aug. 10, 2010 - PRLog -- Minneapolis, MN  Currently available health and safety program management technology from ApexOD can help educational organizations respond to parental concerns like those stirred by the series of reports from USA Today, entitled, “The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America’s Schools.”

According to Duff Dorschner, President of ApexOD, “This is a perfect example of why data matters.  Schools that have a handle on air quality and other metrics for their buildings and can promptly share that information via the web and other channels can quickly confirm their positive status to parents.”  Dorschner explains that this is even more important when misleading or inaccurate data from a media source stirs concerns in certain communities.  He emphasizes, “With more mobility and school choice options, a negative perception about toxic air related to a school building, whether based in reality or not, can gut a school.”

As an example, David Thornton, Assistant Commissioner for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, wrote in a letter to state superintendents at the time, “Our initial analysis indicates that the emissions data used by USA Today may contain errors that have likely led to inaccurate conclusions regarding many Minnesota schools.”

The difficulty is in sorting out the facts, something Dorschner indicates schools can do more effectively with ApexOD’s modular web-based health and safety technology.  “Whether more efficiently using tax dollars with time-saving handheld technology for environmental inspections and audits or simply using intuitive task management to ensure that urgent doesn’t overwhelm important when it comes to resolving environmental health and safety action items in schools, ApexOD drives better results with existing staff while enabling better stewardship of diminishing financial resources.”

Dorschner continues, “Schools have to have an ongoing process to identify where the health and safety problems exist, have a constantly evolving plan to remove or mitigate those risks, and up to date documentation of their progress against that plan.  Increasingly, communication to stakeholders needs to embrace the web.”  

Unfortunately, as Dorschner points out, “Many educational organizations are succeeding in only one or two of these steps.  All too often, schools make most of the effort (and spend significant dollars), but fail in tracking progress and status, leaving an environment rife with excesses, missed opportunities, and rework.”

About:  

ApexOD is dedicated to building affordable state of the art technology which empowers health & safety professionals to create healthy & safe environments for staff, students and communities.  

Based on over twenty years of field environmental health and safety expertise, ApexOD provides a patent-pending suite of web-based environmental health and safety program management products designed to improve compliance, save time, enhance communication, reduce risk, and lower the cost of delivering a safe and healthy environment in clients’ buildings.

Media Contact Info:
Mark Fournier, Director of Sales – mark@apexod.com +1.888.370.2739 x12

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ApexOD provides centralized environmental health and safety program management technology that drives cost savings, risk reduction, and performance improvement to organizations in a number of industries.