Choose Safe Places
Helping early care and education facilities protect students and staff from exposure to environmental hazards.
In the process of opening a new child care facility? Moving your child care to a new location? Before you commit, we would love to help! Choose Safe Places for Early Care and Education is a voluntary program from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) facilitated by New Hampshire APPLETREE staff. The program’s focus is on ensuring that early care and education (ECE) facilities are located in safe places so that children are not exposed to dangerous chemicals during their care.
In the United States, about 8.3 million children are in licensed ECE programs for an average of 36 hours per week. Choose Safe Places works to protect children at these facilities from naturally occurring contaminants like arsenic, uranium and radon, as well as manufactured contaminants such as lead, pesticides and other chemicals that can be found in air, water, soil and dust.
Support for best practices
There are many ways the Choose Safe Places team works to support implementation of environmental health best practices for ECE providers. Examples include:
- Listening to concerns about environmental exposures.
- Training: Providing free e-course trainings for ECE providers on the ProSolutions website:
- Children’s Environmental Health (use code: NHECO at checkout).
- Childhood Lead Poisoning in NH: How to Keep Children Lead-Safe.
- Advising: interpretation of environmental testing results and advice on treatment options.
Set it up safe
The Choose Safe Places team has developed a voluntary property checklist to help ECE providers determine if a potential property for a child care location is safe from environmental contamination. Checklists can be filled out digitally and then printed and mailed to NHDES or you can email your completed PDF to either of the contacts listed below.
The checklist includes questions that cover the four key considerations for choosing a safe place for child care:
- Former use of the site.
- Nearby sites and activities.
- Naturally occurring contamination.
- Access to safe drinking water.
Even if a child care program meets all current licensing regulations, it may be in a place where children and staff could unknowingly encounter dangerous chemicals. The checklist provides guidance on how to make sure the property is safe and stays safe for everyone.
Get in touch
Questions or concerns? Please reach out to NH-APPLETREE@des.nh.gov.