In the biz, it’s called IAQ — indoor air quality, an often-misunderstood aspect of environmental health and compliance.

According to Adam Lesko, owner of Green Environmental Consulting (GEC) in Florence, there are a number of things that can negatively impact the air we breathe, ranging from mold to asbestos to poorly functioning ventilators.

Sometimes, these issues lead to less-than-healthy working conditions or so-called ‘sick buildings,’ and Lesko has made it his life’s work to serve as the doctor on call.

“We specialize in indoor air quality,” he said, noting that the specialty includes remediation techniques, but also the creation of management systems for buildings, their environmental systems, and record-keeping mechanisms. “All of this relates back to the company name. It’s ‘green’ for a reason — air quality is one of the biggest concerns when it comes to environmental compliance.”

But environmental services like those offered by GEC haven’t always been in high demand.

“In the past, people have not looked at air quality as a place where long-term, positive changes could be made,” said Lesko. “Instead, most people have seen the regulations they must adhere to and the standards they’ve had to meet, and not been able to see past the upfront costs.”

Air Apparent

Today, though, environmental-compliance assistance is in increasing demand. This is due in part to a greater awareness and response to IAQ and other health- and environment-related concerns on both state and federal levels; the EPA, for example, has launched a comprehensive Indoor Environments Program, which includes guidelines for schools and school districts, homes, offices, and institutional buildings.

Trends in the marketplace, including a greater focus on ‘green building’ and LEED-certified construction, are also helping to put IAQ in the spotlight. This, in turn, is making air quality more relevant to a number of other industries, including commercial real-estate markets, construction, health care, and even education.

More than ever, said Lesko, property managers and owners are realizing a need to test for poor air quality and other environmental hazards, and to remediate any issues and avoid complaints from tenants, clients, or employees. Failure to do so can result in costly renovations and cleanup efforts, low productivity, and, in many cases, some bad publicity that can hurt a building’s reputation.

“Anyone who operates any kind of large facility has to think about this,” he said, “and we have plenty of residential work, too. The trends really follow the media — if 20/20 runs a piece on the dangers of mold, we get a lot of calls from homeowners. If there’s a news story about the mountain of paperwork facilities are required to keep, and how it keeps growing, then we hear from colleges, hospitals, schools … you name it.”

Breathing Life into the Industry

In essence, GEC provides options to clients designed to create healthier indoor working conditions. Lesko said most often, this translates into remediating issues with asbestos and mold (“mold is big this time of year,” he said, “and asbestos is always big”), upgrading air-quality infrastructure and plans (including ventilation and filtration systems), and monitoring and testing areas in which employees work to ensure they meet health and safety compliance standards.

“We do a lot of work with industrial hygiene and database solutions to manage environmental information,” he explained, noting that, until very recently, facilities charged with maintaining environmental information often did so with a pad and pencil, storing records in a conventional file cabinet.

“New technology eliminates the need for a physical paper trail and data entry, and increases access to information, thus limiting the potential for a hazardous situation,” he continued. “The most commonly cited issue associated with environmental regulations is the need for thorough, accessible records.”

Lesko had worked in this field for several years, the bulk of those with a national firm specializing in the field of environmental consulting, before striking out on his own in 2006.

“I saw an opportunity to produce a quality product, and I liked the idea of owning a local company,” he said. “I felt I could do a better job — when people work with us, they’re going to be working with a senior-level employee every time.”

His timing was good, too. Now working with a diverse set of clients in the midst of the biggest environmental boom in American history, Lesko leads a team of four, assessing needs, providing solutions, and usually offering some educational components, too.

“There have been a number of studies, for instance, looking at how air quality affects employee productivity,” he said. “In turn, there’s a lot of research on how we can improve efficiency by improving the indoor environment. Healthy employees are happy employees, and we’re definitely seeing more people take that idea seriously.”

Building Excitement

As green trends continue to explode, he said opportunities for GEC are multiplying as well. Lesko has already carved a niche for himself working with a wide range of clients, addressing their clean-air needs. He’s worked with a number of educational institutions across Western Mass. and Northern Conn., including Tantasqua regional schools, Granby public schools, Belchertown public schools, and Smith College. He also works with a number of real-estate brokers and developers offering assessment services on various properties in preparation for a sale, as well as general contractors, offering compliance assurance and monitoring programs.

“Developers are often surprised by the amount of remediation they’re required to perform on a property, and too often, that surprise comes after a property has been purchased,” said Lesko. “Our stance is that pre-investigation, so to speak, is a really smart way to do business because it offers more information on a property that can be used when negotiating prices or taking out a loan.

“There is a real and true cost associated with environmental compliance that too few people acknowledge,” he added.

There’s a residential arm of GEC too, through which Lesko and his team provide testing and inspection services to identify issues caused by lead paint, mold, asbestos, and other hazards.

But in addition, Lesko said he’s gradually moving GEC further into the green-building sector — an area in which environmental compliance is becoming more intrinsic than ever.

“We’re doing more already on the green-building side of things,” he said, “especially in the field of testing. I definitely hope this in an area in which we can grow, because there are opportunities to work with all types of buildings — both old and new.”

GEC is working toward attaining its own LEED certification to better serve the building sector. Lesko said part of the decision to move in this direction was, as in the past, driven by media attention to green-construction practices, but it’s a trend he says will likely forge significant positive changes in the industry.

“This is a good industry to join,” he explained. “Some might say that there’s been almost too much marketing of green building and green products, but a lot of good has already come out of that aggressive stance, and it’s always healthy for us to think about these things.”

Lesko says that this trendy thought process notwithstanding, green building, with environmental compliance as one of its key tenets, is leading to the design of more efficient buildings.

“It’s great because it’s driving people to think more proactively, to think about things more intelligently, and to design tighter buildings.”

The going-green phenomenon is shedding some light on Lesko’s work, which revolves around finding invisible foes and bringing others out of the shadows. “Now, more people are seeing that changes to air quality can create benefits,” he said.

And for him and his clients, that is indeed a breath of fresh air.

Jaclyn Stevenson can be reached at[email protected]

There’s construction underway at Greenfield Community College, and a temporary hallway connecting the campus’ north and south wings has been adorned with drawings, quotes, song lyrics, and signatures by its students.

It speaks to the strong arts programming at the college, and perhaps also to the sensibilities of many of its students; a large blue peace sign stands out from the rest of the largely good-natured graffiti.

Bob Pura, president of GCC, isn’t surprised by the composition of the makeshift exhibit.

“Our arts programs are all very strong, and I’d say among the finest of all college arts programs,” he said. “I say that as objectively as I possibly can. It’s based on what I’ve seen at our portfolio days; four-year and arts colleges have come to the campus literally with checks in hand, ready to award scholarships to our students.”

GCC offers a number of arts-related degree and certificate programs, including Fine Art, Graphic Design, Dance, Digital Media, and Theater. Some course tracks fall under the Commonwealth Transfer Compact, which allows students to transfer their credits to state colleges or UMass (50% of GCC students move on to a four-year institution), while other classes, such as painting and photography, are offered in conjunction with the Massachusetts College of Art.

The strong arts component at GCC is also derived in part from the Franklin County region, which has a robust creative community. However, Pura, who has served as GCC’s president for seven years, said the community has other strengths, opportunities, and needs that the college is also well-positioned to address as the only community college serving the county.

“We are the only point of access to higher education in Franklin County, and as such we feel a sense of responsibility to meet the needs of the community,” he said.

To that end, GCC has long offered a wide range of courses in health care and health sciences. It serves as the primary training center for future EMTs living and working in Franklin County, and its nursing program has the highest pass rate among community colleges in the state. In addition, the college also offers a certificate program in massage therapy, and degree tracks in occupational therapy and the so-called ‘healing arts.’

About 5,000 students, largely from Franklin County, attend GCC; about half of that number are enrolled in credit-bearing courses, while the remainder take part in non-credit, professional-development, and continuing-education courses ranging from accounting to software development to the politics of the Middle East.

Pura said creating a pipeline from the community to GCC is an ongoing effort at the school, regardless of its status as the county’s only college.

This April, a community-access scholarship fund designed to reach students, as he put it, “at risk of not continuing on to higher education,” will be rolled out, awarding scholarships to about 40 individuals. The fund was started by two anonymous donors, both living in Franklin County.

“They saw a need, as we do, to underscore the importance of the associate’s degree to economic and social stability in our world today,” said Pura. “We truly believe that the associate’s degree is the new standard, and this fund is important in getting the word out. Too many people in our community have been told that they don’t have to continue their education beyond high school, or that they can’t.”

But Pura believes the bond between GCC and the county it serves is only strengthening, and that bodes well for the campus, the community, and a number of new initiatives that are broadening the scope of educational options for people from all walks of life.

Pura said each program is aimed at the broad goal of creating a social and economic impact on the community and the world through a strong, liberal arts-based education.

“We’ve been working aggressively to create collaboration within the community that addresses workforce needs,” he said. “Our students learn in a hands-on manner, in order to be an asset to the workforce, but they’re also taught to see the big picture.”

Power to the People

Part of that picture is ecological responsibility, said Pura, and a number of initiatives on the GCC campus have ‘green’ components to them. These new green practices are being put into play in ways both small and large. In an effort to reduce the number of plastic water bottles used each day by students and faculty, for example, water fountains are being fitted with spouts designed to refill them, as often seen in health clubs, as part of the current construction projects — largely renovations and improvements to existing buildings, funded in part through GCC’s annual campaign, which last year raised more than $1 million.

But on the other side of the spectrum, a more far-reaching endeavor is gaining steam: a new focus on sustainable energy, introduced last year, strives to prepare students for the jobs of the future.

“Sustainable energy is getting a lot of attention, and we’ve already been identified as a model for the state,” said Pura. “We’re working with individuals and businesses to educate and train people in sustainable fields, such as solar power. As these fields emerge, employers will look to our graduates to perform the work they need.”

Pura said GCC received a grant four years ago from Northeast Utilities to develop and teach a course called ‘Sustainable Energy: Theory and Practices.’ As the need for workforce education in this field grew, the college began seeking funds for an expanded sustainable-energy program, and last summer garnered a $372,000 grant from the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund for a Sustainable Practices in Construction (SPC) project, administered by the Commonwealth Corp.

The grant paired GCC with local businesses to defray tuition and materials costs, allowing local employees to take renewable energy courses.

In October of last year, the program expanded again, this time through a $50,000 grant from the Mass. Technology Collaborative that trains high-school educators through GCC courses that teach renewable-energy technology techniques and theories.

In turn, the teachers who are taking courses at GCC can then create equivalent courses at their schools, which students will be able to take and receive credit from GCC.

Pura said the college is also constructing a new teaching greenhouse that will assist in delivering the key concepts of sustainable energy, but will also serve as a showcase for sustainable practices.

“This will be the greenest of all greenhouses,” he said. “We are developing a strong curriculum for teaching sustainable energy, but at the same time, we’ve made a commitment, like many colleges across the nation, to increase our energy efficiency, and to learn as much as we can to reduce our own footprint. We call them ‘role-model practices.’”

Overall, said Pura, the sustainable energy program is indicative of an ‘act locally, think globally’ model that has long been in place at GCC.

“It’s probably one of the best examples of how we’ve stayed engaged in the community in order to learn what’s needed, so our graduates are sought after,” said Pura, noting that in recent years, GCC has identified several economic clusters in Franklin County that are poised to welcome college-trained professionals. “We’ve filled gaps in health care, especially through the nursing program; we’ve worked with artists and writers to create networks of support, and we’ve created a very technology-focused business program.”

Peace of the Puzzle

Moving forward with that mission of community-minded, globally focused student and resource development, Pura said there’s another academic program blossoming at GCC: a degree-bearing suite of courses in Peace and Social Justice that was also unveiled last year.

The program evaluates the concepts of peace and conflict through an interdisciplinary studies option, which includes courses in mediation and conflict-resolution and seminars addressing nonviolence and social action.

Through this program, which awards an associate of arts degree, students are presented with eight tenets of a culture of peace: respect all life, reject violence, share with others, listen to understand, preserve the planet, rediscover solidarity, work for women’s equality, and participate in democracy.

“It may not be a big program, but it’s one that elevates the definition of student success,” said Pura, explaining that often, a barrier to higher education is the inability on the part of the student to answer the question ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’

“At student orientations, I often ask how many students don’t know why they’re here,” he said. “After an uncomfortable silence, usually a few hands start going up, then a few more.”

Peace and Action

“I tell them they don’t have to have everything figured out,” he continued. “They’re here to learn how to learn, and through education, they can find their purpose and meaning. They’re here to find out what brings meaning to their lives.”

That could be a career in art, or installing water-conserving spouts on public drinking fountains. It could be a job in health care, or a mission to promote peace around the globe.

The writing on the walls at GCC suggests that anything is possible.

Jaclyn Stevenson can be reached at[email protected]