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Pop Quiz #1
Safe Studio Checklist
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INTRODUCTION TO TOXIC STUDIOS What if they aren't? What if scarce information and bad habits by various parties in the dance industry puts our health at risk? Good health is paramount to dancers and is necessary for long term enjoyment of the art form. DanceArt.com will take on the job of pointing out the allergy and toxic hazards in your local dance studio because it matters to all of us. Follow along and you'll learn how to evaluate your studio, how to fix it, and how to protect your health while staying active in dance. We will discuss things that will upset dance advertisers and studio owners. Folks can get pretty grumpy when called to account for the unnecessary hazards that we as business owners are responsible for creating. We are naming some names in our effort to educate and inform but we will not libel in the process. All parties mentioned will have opportunity to respond within this space if they wish. Tell us about your safe products, your regret and your plan to reform. Such responses will be approved for inclusion in this section. But DanceArt.com will not support any efforts to obfuscate the hazards that are highlighted here. We will not be anything close to exhaustive on the topic. Doing this correctly would require a significant research budget. Instead we will borrow information about broad categories of materials and practices from other groups, such as the hospital industry. We will tap these resources to learn from other's mistakes and to leverage research investments that have already been made. This info on TOXIC Studios needs to be in your hands sooner than later.
WHAT DOES TOXIC MEAN? TOXIC =
ALLERGY, ASTHMA, & ILLNESS Maybe you have some awareness of 'huffing' which is an attempt to get high by sniffing concentrated fumes of things like gasoline, glues and household chemicals. Long-term low-level exposure to the gases that slip out of products in our indoor environments can generate some of the same brain, lung and liver damage as huffing. Normal allergies, allergies to common chemicals, and anaphylactic reactions are personal responses to a substance that has become toxic to our body and brain. The problems with air quality in your studio can not be dismissed even if only 1
out of 1000 (or 10,000) children has an immediate reaction. Common sense, and the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), suggests that the dance industry needs to
take reasonable steps to accommodate those that are disabled or that can be
harmed by utilization of dance facilities, dance instruction, and dance
products. HOW LONG IS IT TOXIC? Maybe you don't feel sick but parents have started describing you as a 'ditzy' when you are actually an accomplished business person and a caring teacher. Memory loss, personality, stress and emotional management skills can all change so slowly that they are frequently attributed to the aging process, grief, or even a bad marriage. Maybe the studio air is bad and contributes to your aging and health problems. Maybe this is your brain on chemicals -- chemicals that rewire your thoughts and can clog the lungs of dancers and teachers. Just because you put the spray can away doesn't mean you are 'good as new.' You've increased your chemical burden by inhaling and touching the stuff. The paint container and the paint drips on it will continue to put chemicals in the air, as will your newly painted props. This is 'long-term' and 'low-level' exposure that you may be unable to smell or otherwise detect until you get really ill and thus very sensitive to the toxins. In your studio maybe you'll find a bottle of spot remover and next to that, a gallon jug of floor cleaner. Maybe these have been partially used, long forgotten and stored in the girls' bathroom or a utility closet. Putting containers of chemicals behind a locked cabinet or door does not keep the fumes from seeping out into places where people are working and playing. Please remember that out of sight is not 'out of brain or out of lung.' Lingering effects and sneaky fumes will find a way to damage people.
We use the word 'chemicals' in the broadest sense -- we mean solids, powders, liquids, gels, gases, vapors, fumes, and so on. 'Chemical' might mean a gas consisting of a single atomic element like Helium or it might mean a more complex compound. The air you breathe isn't a single chemical but is a stew of chemicals that aren't bound or related to each other. Air has Nitrogen and Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide and tons of other chemical compounds in it. Some of those you need, some you can ignore, and some can harm you in very small quantities especially with long periods of exposure. In TOXIC Studios we are focused on chemicals that are part of your dance environment. Yes many of those are poisonous if ingested, but we highlight the gas and odors that products give off because they are difficult to control and sometimes hard to detect. A good example is Pine-Sol brand cleaner. You might be trained to think the pine smell means 'clean' but that evaporation action and smell are evidence of large quantities of chemicals being released into the air. How could Pine-Sol, stored or used in the bathroom, upset any dancers? The product contains pine oil and can easily harm someone with a tree or rosin allergy. The allergic reaction to the fumes could be an immediate coughing fit or it could just damage lung capacity enough during a single toilet break to reduce the dancer's aerobic capacity when she resumes rehearsal. Think of these VOC chemicals, especially petroleum and alcohol based solvents and modifiers, as a dangerous dog in your neighbor's yard. The VOC dog will break free to bite you every chance he gets. He will tunnel under the fence, push it down or jump it. He will break his leash, will sneak out of the gate and will bite his owner if necessary. Humidity, warm air, ozone from outside, and ozone from ion-type air cleaners will help VOCs escape to pollute your air. Volatile Organic Compounds want to be free to float above your dance floor. VOCs are strongest from new products and new construction but they never stop escaping from plywood, vinyl, and adhesives. VOCs literally hold the product together. When all the formaldehyde escapes from the resin in your plywood cabinets you'll be left with just a pile of wood chips. We've measured formaldehyde levels exceeding 0.3 ppm (parts per million) in 25 year old cabinets. This is 3 times higher than the level thought to be irritating to lungs and eyes. Here is a quick look at some of the compounds that are floating around in most studios, based on the installed products and use of the space:
When crude oil is distilled one of the resulting products is gasoline. Did you know that before cars needed gasoline it was sold in cans as a lice treatment and grease remover? When leaves of the melaleuca alternifolia plant are distilled tea tree oil is the result. Tea tree oil isn't found in nature in a special pond, it is manufactured. And it isn't exactly safe:
So from now on you don't get a free pass
just because something is supposed to be 'all natural' or because it has a
natural sounding name. SHE'S JUST A DIVA -- SHE'LL GET USED TO THE
SMELL If you get complaints about an odor, even if
you are unable to detect the same thing, you would do well to investigate
and to immediately fix or remove the source from the studio. Remember
that dancers are often highly motivated to stay in your studio and are
driven to do well. The dancer or her nose might quickly learn to
ignore the smell and that could silence the only alarm you have about a
potential health hazard in the studio. NO COMPLAINTS MEANS NO PROBLEM. RIGHT? The easy response is that some asthma triggering chemicals have no odor at all. Odor is an indicator of a problem but not always a good one. It is also common for people to enjoy smells like 'new car smell,' ink markers, glues, and new paper without understanding how toxic the source really is to other people. Since even a pleasant smelling product can be very dangerous, a responsible studio owner and teacher will read labels, will read Material Safety Data Sheets, and will research all products introduced into the studio air space. Hopefully this will happen before the product is purchased and put into service. Perhaps the most difficult concept to grasp about TOXIC Studios is that the health damage and the demonstration of risk can take many years to develop. Dancers and employees also have exposure at home, at school, at the office, and in the car so the studio is just one source of toxic exposures. The studio could be the biggest long term IAQ health risk a dancer faces if it is in bad shape. Even if you live in a polluted city, the Indoor Air Quality of our homes, businesses, and cars can be 10 to 1000 times more toxic than outdoor air. This is due to poor ventilation and indoor products made from untested hazardous chemicals. A dance teacher is unable to prevent a parent from smoking at home and is unable to veto toxic bedroom furniture or sleepwear. Yet the dance industry can provide safer places to dance than we currently do. We can do a better job of maintaining good health. In a 24 hour day let's assume a dancer is in the studio for 2 hours. If you do the math it would seem like only 1/12th of her exposure is from the studio. During those two hours her heart and lungs are working faster, she is burning more calories and her lungs are used more completely than at any other time during the day. So the real exposure levels at the studio are considerably higher if you make allowances for activity levels. If she consumes three times as much air per hour at the studio than during the rest of the day then 1/4 of her inhalation exposure is at the studio. If your studio is toxic but it would take many years of daily exposure for the sensitive but healthy person to show symptoms it might feel like you don't really have a problem. Student and employee turnover help to limit studio liability and limit the harm bad air can cause. It is very unlikely that sick former students will think to ask if the studio contributed to the chronic asthma cough that starts later in life. It may take a unique set of circumstances to wake each of us up -- perhaps complaints from long term employees will do the trick. Or maybe this article will be useful and will encourage change. Have you ever seen a former student return as an adult dancer and then watch them drop out of class complaining about being too old and out of shape? Lung irritation and damage can feel like that. The dancer's return to a former studio can trigger breathing difficulties, exhaustion, allergies, and/or flu symptoms that are really the immune system's response to old allergies that are now surprisingly in full bloom. If the dancer feels stronger and has more energy at a competitive studio, at the gym, or on the jogging trail then odds are good that she will understand that the original studio is a health hazard and she won't return. Long term risks are very difficult to compute and very difficult to plan for. Instead we are encouraging you to focus on creating a healthy studio for your current students since we can guarantee that they already have allergies and asthma. Reduce the toxins in your studio and dancers will be forever grateful. They will work longer and thus highlight your studio's abilities even more.
Beyond that, you can and should watch for clues in yourself and other dancers that could indicate that IAQ problems exist:
MOST TOXIC AT THE WORST TIME -
RECITALS
AND SHOWS Tempers seem a bit short too. Dancers seem to be slacking off, can't focus, are emotional, are easily winded during rehearsals, and a few are sneaking hits on asthma inhalers. We've all seen it and lived it. Once we think rationally about what is going on it is easy to see that we expect the most from dancers at exactly the time we make the studio the most dangerous for lungs and brains. We demand physical endurance and mental focus, yell when we don't get it, and we just don't consider the impact of the pollution that we permit in the studio. Dancers are breathing hard and deep and soaking up all the chemicals along with needed oxygen. Airways restrict, lungs burn with the exercise, and brains get muddled. Yes, that old performance magic is in the air once again. These normal studio products and events are made possible through chemistry and many of them can do great harm. When the air fills with hundreds of chemicals from the clutter, activity and people in the studio, the air quality plummets. So now we examine some of the year round hazards in our studios and offer suggestions on protecting the health of the dancers, customers, teachers, and families that we come in contact with. The dance industry has considerable responsibility to 'do no harm.'
DON'T COVER IT UP Here is an example from a Dallas studio that
has long had a sewage odor in one of the hallways. Instead of
calling a plumber the studio turned to the cleaning crew for a solution.
The cleaning crew thinks there is a hygiene problem in the men's bathroom.
So they spray 'smell good stuff' and place an air deodorizer tablet in the
urinal.
Do you see the problem here? Like at many studios, the boys aren't provided a real dressing room. They change clothes, rest, and chat in a small poorly ventilated restroom while directly in front of the smelly urinal deodorizer. The boys are expected to dance well, jump big, and lift partners immediately after leaving the bathroom. It would be difficult for the dancer to perform at his best if chemicals in the bathroom cause anemia and the death of his red blood cells. On average, one out of 16 people should have this problem. You might think there are too few boys in dance to worry about it, but his parents will wonder why the studio is permitted to conduct business in such a careless way. There are many chemicals in use in restrooms in restaurants, theaters,
airports, offices, and schools. It is easy to assume that those
chemicals must then be okay for the studio. But studio
facilities aren't as well ventilated, they have a smaller airspace, and
dancers are likely to spend more time in them. Try to cover up a smell
and you really could be harming dancers.
TAX CREDITS AND DEDUCTIONS - FINANCIAL HELP TO REDUCE
STUDIO ALLERGIES
Because we are talking about making accessibility changes to your studio so you can better serve your allergy disabled clients, the Americans with Disabilities Act will be useful. The IRS is so interested in the accessibility of your studio that they might help pay for some of the changes with tax credits and deductions. Do not rely on this web site or article for tax advice. Discuss the issue with your accountant and tax attorney. The IRS Barrier Removal deduction: maximum of $15,000 per year. If you wish to replace carpet and Marley with safer materials you should probably document your concerns with your current flooring and show how the new materials are less toxic. This could be as simple as printing articles from allergy web sites or those that we link to. You do not need to wait for an official ADA complaint from one of your customers - you can improve access to your business proactively. Having complaints in your files should only strengthen your claim for the deductions and credits so don't shy away from them. Try IRS Publication 535 and IRS: Know the Rules Regarding Tax Incentives for Improving Accessibility for the Disabled. The IRS Disabled Access Credit: maximum of $10,000 per year. See IRS Form 8826. You may be able to take both the deduction and the credit - talk to your accountant. Environmental Cleanup Costs: If you have toxic materials to remove and dispose of you may be able to deduct the costs as current business expenses. Again see IRS Publication 535.
Hotels and convention centers are designed for meetings, not aerobic dance activities. The materials used and the ventilation systems may not be adequate to protect dancer's lungs. So what to do? Start by passing the buck. Make sure that your director and the competition / convention director understand that they are responsible for finding the safest venues possible. Ask specifically about IAQ issues. Organizers should always ask if carpet and glues are non-toxic and no VOC. Carbon dioxide levels and airflow levels should be automatically monitored and adjusted to the needs of the room. Also make sure that carpets will be at least 6 months old by the time of your event date and insist on notification if any unplanned construction or carpet installation happens before or during the event. Toxic carpet, mystery carpet (of unknown origin, age, and toxicity levels), any carpet less than 6 months old, and construction should all be deal breakers. Take your lungs and money elsewhere. Our '6 month' suggestion is just a rough guideline -- many low quality carpet installations will emit significant odors for longer. Your best bet is to send someone with a very sensitive nose to the venue to check for carpets odors and air quality issues. If the place smells like carpet and glue, pass on it. Gymnasiums at large health clubs, high schools and colleges may be better and healthier locations for your dance event. If the event is too big and popular to use a healthy venue, then in our opinion it is too big to go on. DanceArt.com makes an offer of free advertising to any national or regional competition or convention that protects dancer health by applying strict IAQ requirements on every venue selection.
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