The smell hits Kitty Hernlen the second she walks into the classroom at Bayvale Elementary School.

“Sniff,” she said to Scottie Paschal.

“Yeah, smell that,” he said.

“It’s in here somewhere,” Hernlen said.

They quickly track down the source of the floral smell, an air freshener in a cabinet, and confiscate it as a potential trigger to an asthma attack.

Hernlen, an assistant professor of respiratory therapy at Georgia Health Sciences University, is using a $30,000 grant from the W.G. Raoul Foundation in Atlanta to help Bayvale and schools in Warren and Emanuel counties in east central Georgia improve their indoor air quality and potentially help control student asthma.

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Ingrid Jackson, who bought a car from U.S. Auto Sales, said she was among the customers who had their car disabled by a kill switch system that impacted thousands of buyers across the Southeast who had paid their car loans on time. She is pictured in Barnesville, Ga., where she lives.  (Hyosub Shin / AJC)

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC