[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 3756 Introduced in Senate (IS)]








109th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 3756

To study and improve the air quality inside school buses, and for other 
                               purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                July 27 (legislative day, July 26), 2006

 Mr. Menendez introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
       referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To study and improve the air quality inside school buses, and for other 
                               purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Healthy School Bus Act of 2006''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds that--
            (1) although air pollution is a health hazard for people of 
        all ages, children are potentially more vulnerable because the 
        lungs of children are still developing and children breathe 50 
        percent more air per pound of body weight than adults;
            (2) diesel exhaust is considered to be a probable human 
        carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency and the World 
        Health Organization and contains a high concentration of fine 
        particles and 40 compounds that are listed as hazardous air 
        pollutants by the California Environmental Protection Agency;
            (3) fine particles from diesel exhaust have been implicated 
        as a potential cause of heart disease, respiratory disease, and 
        stroke;
            (4) diesel exhaust aggravates asthma, a disease that 
        affects approximately 4,500,000 American children in 
        kindergarten through twelfth grade;
            (5) nearly 24,000,000 children in the United States spend 
        an average of an hour and a half each day in a school bus;
            (6) because of the protection school buses provide in the 
        event of a crash, school buses are the safest way for children 
        to travel to school;
            (7) the Clean School Bus USA program of the Environmental 
        Protection Agency, designed to help school districts replace 
        aging bus fleets or install pollution control equipment, 
        received proposals requesting approximately $60,000,000 in 
        grants, but could only award $10,000,000 in grants;
            (8) recent studies have indicated that the concentration of 
        diesel exhaust inside a school bus can be considerably higher 
        than in the ambient environment, and that some, if not most, of 
        that pollution may be coming from the bus itself; and
            (9) although activities designed to curtail emissions from 
        the tailpipe of school buses appear to have a positive effect 
        on the air quality inside the bus cabin, it is not clear how 
        pollution enters the cabin or what the best strategies are for 
        combating the pollution.

SEC. 3. STUDY OF AIR QUALITY INSIDE SCHOOL BUSES.

    (a) Study.--Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of 
this Act, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency 
shall--
            (1) conduct a study on air quality inside school buses; and
            (2) submit to Congress a report on the results of the 
        study.
    (b) Strategies.--The Administrator shall--
            (1) develop strategies for improving air quality inside 
        school buses;
            (2) conduct or support research to evaluate the 
        effectiveness of the strategies; and
            (3) not later than 15 months after the date of enactment of 
        this Act, submit to Congress a report describing the strategies 
        and the results of the research.
    (c) Authorization of Appropriations.--There is authorized to be 
appropriated to carry out this section $750,000.

SEC. 4. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATION FOR CLEAN SCHOOL BUS ACTIVITIES.

    There is authorized to be appropriated to the Administrator of the 
Environmental Protection Agency to carry out activities (including 
expansion of the Clean School Bus USA program) to reduce the quantity 
of air pollution emitted by school buses and to improve the air quality 
inside of school buses $55,000,000 for fiscal year 2006 and each 
subsequent fiscal year.

SEC. 5. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

    It is the sense of Congress that local educational agencies and 
schools should--
            (1) assign less-polluting buses to the longest school bus 
        routes; and
            (2) adopt and implement policies to decrease school bus 
        idling.
                                 <all>