Taking pollutants off the kids' menu

Abstract

Even though they become teenagers, children are among our most precious resource. As one comedian noted: “Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home”, and despite that fact, their vulnerability to the environment, at home and abroad, should be of prime importance. The good news is that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is addressing the matter; the bad news is that it is not addressing it quite as effectively as children's health professionals deem necessary. In June 2007, the EPA proposed tightening the air-quality standard for ozone from 0.08 ppm to between 0.070 and 0.075 ppm. Democratic legislators had complained that the EPA, at the urging of industry, was creating a scenario for keeping the 0.08-ppm standard. In mid-July, the EPA Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (hereafter, “the Committee”) called on the EPA to set more stringent air-quality standards for ozone than the suggested level. The Committee authorized a letter stating that “a standard in the proposed range (0.070–0.074 ppm) does not sufficiently protect the 73.7 million children in the US from ozone-related harm”. The Committee emphasized that children are especially susceptible to the effects of ozone, including increased incidence of asthma. In 1997, President Clinton authored Executive Order 13045. This important document, entitled Protection of children from environmental health risks and safety risks, is the basis for potential federal action. The Order cited the disproportionate physiological and behavioral susceptibility of children to adverse effects from environmental hazards and requires the EPA and all federal agencies to “identify and assess environmental health risks and safety risks that may disproportionately affect children; and…ensure that [agency] policies, programs, activities, and standards address” such risks. This action eventually led to the EPA's 2006 Guide to considering children's health when developing EPA actions: implementing Executive Order 13045 and EPA's policy on evaluating health risks to children. The Guide recognizes that unique risks arise with children because, first, they generally eat more food, drink more water, and breathe more air relative to their size than do adults, and consequently may be exposed to relatively higher amounts of contaminants. Second, normal childhood activities, such as putting hands in mouths or playing on the ground, can result in exposure to contaminants that adults do not face. In children aged 18 months to 2 years, the ingestion and mouthing of non-nutritive substances easily available to them, the “pica effect”, is common. Third, the Guide recognized that environmental contaminants may affect children disproportionately because their immune-system defenses are not fully developed and their growing organs are more easily harmed. Finally, the Guide reviews a broad range of “early life”, pre-natal, and post-natal environmental exposures that may affect the incidence of disease or alter development. Early life exposures include parental occupational exposure to toxicants before conception, maternal exposure during gestation, and exposures to chemicals or radiation during infancy and childhood. Despite this veneer of protective federal intentions, lawsuits have alleged that a variety of children's environmental issues are not addressed by the EPA: from those involving farm children exposed to pesticides in the fields near their homes, on their parents' skin and clothing, in irrigation ditches where they swim, and in the well water they drink, to cases alleging insufficient carbon monoxide standards linked to low birth weights and other serious health problems. A number of private suits alleging children's vulnerability to certain conditions have been filed. For example, a company that operates school buses for San Francisco was accused of falsifying emissions tests on vehicles, and advocates are pushing for signs alerting students to the dangers of diesel exhaust to be posted on school buses statewide. In another instance, a Rhode Island jury decided against paint manufacturers who had covered up the risks that lead paint poses to children. The EPA even has an “Environmental Kids Club” web site, designed to promote children's awareness of pressing environmental problems, an altogether laudable undertaking. Now, if only adults could be made more aware of children's vulnerability to the chemicals grown-ups take for granted.