EPA, Scholastic Inc. promote clean school buses

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The EPA and Scholastic Inc. have partnered to educate children about clean air and to promote environmentally-friendly school buses.

On Oct. 18, 2007, Scholastic released The Magic School Bus Gets Cleaned Up — a special-edition book based on the longstanding children’s series. In it, Ms. Frizzle and her students travel through a diesel engine and learn about how to reduce school bus idling and the pollutants emitted by school buses. At the end of the book, their bus is retrofitted with a pollution-control device.

EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock read the book to second-graders at Cunningham Park Elementary School in Vienna, Va. Afterward, the students boarded Scholastic’s traveling Magic School Bus (an interactive science experience for children). The bus was equipped with a new diesel particulate filter, which reduces emissions by up to 90 percent.

“President Bush and EPA are making that black puff of diesel smoke from school buses something children only learn about in history class,” Peacock said. “This book is a fun way to inspire our children to make our communities cleaner, healthier places to live.”

The partnership between Scholastic and the EPA was facilitated by the agency’s Clean School Bus USA program. The program brings together business, education, transportation and public health organizations to reduce school bus idling, add pollution control devices to buses and replace older buses with new ones.

For more information about The Magic School Bus Gets Cleaned Up, visit www.epa.gov/otaq/schoolbus/msb-book.htm.