Replacing all of the oldest school buses in the nation could lead to 1.3 million fewer daily absences annually, according to a new study.

The suspected cause of these preventable absences is exposure to high levels of diesel exhaust fumes, which can leak into school bus cabins or enter buses through open windows. Over time, exposure can exacerbate respiratory illnesses and other conditions and lead to missed school days, the researchers say.

“Even relatively short commutes on school buses can dominate students’ daily air pollution exposures,” says Meredith Pedde, an environmental epidemiology research fellow at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and lead researcher for the study in Nature Sustainability.

Pedde conducted the research with senior author Sara Adar, associate professor and associate chair of epidemiology at the School of Public Health. Their study is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of the Environmental Protection Agency’s School Bus Rebate Program, which launched in 2012, Pedde says.

“It is well established that traffic-related pollutants can have harmful effects on the body such as inducing inflammation, reducing lung function. and increasing asthma attacks,” she says. “Given the EPA’s random allotment of its clean bus funding, we believe our research clearly establishes the link between upgrading school buses and student attendance. Moreover, it demonstrates the need for continued and increased support for school districts to replace or upgrade their buses.”

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from nearly 3,000 school districts that applied to the EPA’s school bus replacement funding program between 2012 and 2017 and compared changes in attendance rates in 383 school districts that received funding and 2,400 districts that did not.

On average, they found that districts with upgraded buses had a 0.06 percentage point higher attendance rate compared to districts not selected for the clean bus funding. In a district of 10,000 students, that change means six additional students attended school each day. In total, replacing older school buses with newer models prevented at least 350,000 absences in one year in schools across the country.

In districts with higher levels of estimated ridership on replaced buses and older fleets of buses, the numbers were higher, with 14 more students per day attending school in high ridership districts and 45 more students attending each day in districts that replaced buses built before 1990.

Read the full article about school buses by Kim North Shine at Futurity.