The New England office of the EPA has awarded grants to Keene State College and the Nashua Regional Planning Commission for projects that aim to reduce kids' exposure to toxins.
Keene State College will use the $25,000 for a project that trains citizen scientists to monitor and reduce air pollution from wood smoke, which exacerbates childhood asthma.
The Nashua Regional Planning Commission will use the $25,000 to conduct bilingual outreach on how to store and dispose of hazardous household products.
At an awards announcement in Merrimack on Wednesday, EPA New England Regional Administrator Alexandra Dunn said kids are more vulnerable to toxins than adults.
"We really need to think about where do children play and live and go to school and interact with their environment and how can we make that environment healthier for them," she said.
Senator Maggie Hassan praised the projects for their emphasis on community-based work.
'We are really empowering our communities to engage, to learn, to take responsibility, and then to give us information that will allow us to do this kind of environmental protection work and public health work as effectively as possible."
Both Senator Hassan and Alexandra Dunn commended the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services for starting to address the PFAS crisis in the Merrimack region and Portsmouth.
But Hassan said the work had just begun.
“I’m going to continue to fight to protect the health and safety of our drinking water,” she said.
