Overview

Every child in the United States faces chemical challenges to their health never before experienced in human history. Nearly 70,000 chemicals are traded in international commerce, and most of these were first designed in the last century. Thousands of additional compounds are released to the environment as pollutants, combustion by-products or wastes. Children are routinely exposed to mixtures of synthetic chemicals in air, water, food, soil, and consumer products, and their exposure to these mixtures are neither monitored nor regulated by government.

Almost every year, U.S. officials ban several chemicals to better protect health or environmental quality, while several thousand new chemicals are introduced to international commerce. There is little if any understanding of the potential health threats of these new chemicals.

Today, almost 500 synthetic chemicals-most created since World War II-are detectable in human tissues. Pesticide residues, for example, were recently found in the urine of nearly all children examined in Minnesota and Washington studies.1 PCB's, dioxins, furans, nicotine, flame-retardants, metals, solvents, and some pesticides are found in human breast milk.2 Discovery that lead concentrates in babies' teeth prompted further tests of its effect on learning, intelligence and behavior. Following nearly 25 years of debate, lead was eventually banned from gasoline and paints.3 This history suggests that our bodies may be storing more chemicals than we can now detect. It also suggests that once health risks are recognized, exposures may continue for generations while scientists and lawyers debate what should be done.

Most EPA regulations have resulted from the study of single chemicals. Yet humans are most often exposed to chemical mixtures. And decisions regarding how to regulate single chemicals have often been delayed (by litigation or the search for stronger evidence) for decades. Arsenic, radon, lead, DDT, and hundreds of other air and water pollutants and food contaminants provide examples of protracted regulation. Occasionally Congress becomes so impatient with EPA delays that they demand action on lists of chemicals by specified deadlines-this has occurred in air pollution and pesticide laws. The single chemical focus together with routine delays in regulation leaves the government's capacity to protect children's health from environmental hazards in serious question.

Given this complexity, what should be done? Governments need to become more strategic. They should concentrate on the most potent chemicals, the most concentrated exposures, the chemicals children are most likely to encounter, and mixtures that could combine to produce additive or synergistic effects. They should be especially careful to control persistent chemicals that may accumulate in the environment and our bodies. Help is especially needed from governments and corporations to identify what is hazardous. Threats are often hard to recognize, undetectable to human senses, and sometimes deliberately disguised. Laws protecting trade secrets, confidential business information and privacy may all inhibit public understanding of environmental risks to the health of children.

Parents and others who manage children’s environments hold the greatest potential to reduce children’s exposure to hazardous chemicals. The simplest solution is to keep risky substances out of the environments where children live, learn, play and travel. The pages that follow attempt to provide a sense of what environmental hazards are worth worrying about, and what parents can do to provide greater protection for children.

Trends in Children’s Health

Consider the following trends in children’s health:

Nearly 5 million U.S. children suffer from asthma, and rates have increased rapidly over the past several decades.4
Childhood cancer rates have increased gradually and with consistency for many forms of the disease, while increasing most rapidly for leukemia (ALL) and cancers of the central nervous system (brain tumors).5
Birth defects continue to be the primary cause of infant mortality. Nearly 1 of every 28 babies is born with a birth defect.6
Nearly 17% of children less than 18 years in age have been diagnosed with at least one developmental disorder.7
Between 3-5% of children in the U.S. have Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the incidence may be on the rise. Visits to office-based physicians for pediatric ADHD-related concerns increased by 90% between 1989 and 1996. The use of stimulants such as Ritalin to treat ADHD in children rose 14% during this same period.8
The nervous systems of more than one million children are irreversibly damaged from exposure to lead, primarily from exposure to deteriorating paints.9
Figure 1
Estimates of Childhood Illness in 2002: Ages 0-18

Hazardous Chemical Production and Release

Some important progress has occurred during the past several decades to reduce children’s exposure to chemical hazards. Lead has been phased out of gasoline and paints, and children’s blood lead levels have declined rapidly in response. Some aerosol propellants (CFC’s) were banned to prevent further damage to the high-level ozone shield that protects us all from ultraviolet radiation. Some persistent pesticides such as DDT were banned during the 1970’s, reversing their accumulation in human and animal tissues and restoring populations of eagles, hawks and other birds of prey.

Despite these successes, today’s chemical burden in the environment is growing by almost any measure. Forces propelling these trends include: a growing population, expanding economies, warfare, terrorism, growing international trade, increasing use of energy, increasing use of synthetic chemicals, and ever rising levels of human consumption. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of hazardous substances continue to be released to air, water and land each year or they are intentional ingredients in consumer products such as pesticides, fuels, paints and solvents. Many of these make their way into the lives of children and pregnant women.

Uncertainty and Toxicity Testing

Tens of thousands of chemicals have not yet been fully tested for their potential to harm human health. Fewer than 1% of pesticides used on crops, forests, paints, fabrics, lawns, golf courses, in schools, hospitals, and homes (billions of pounds of nearly 20,000 separate products) have been tested to understand their potential to harm children’s developing nervous systems. EPA demanded tests capable of identifying this hazard for the first time in 2000, with results not yet complete.10

Significant progress will be made in toxicity testing over the next several decades. But if history is our guide, the results will not likely be translated into changes in government policies or products in the marketplace until today’s toddlers are having families of their own. Even if Congress gives EPA power to act, many legal and scientific challenges will likely delay implementation by federal agencies, as they have in the past.

Figure 2: Toxicity Testing Status of
Chemicals Produced in High Volume 1998

Each year, the U.S. produces or imports close to 3,000 high production volume chemicals (HPV) in amounts exceeding 1 million pounds. A 1998 EPA review found no basic toxicity information was publicly available for 43% of HPV chemicals manufactured in the U.S. Six basic tests are necessary for a minimum understanding of a chemical’s hazard: acute toxicity; chronic toxicity; developmental and reproductive toxicity; mutagenicity; ecotoxicity; and environmental fate. Complete basic toxicity information was available for only 7% of HPV chemicals.11

The absence of chemical testing combined with routine exposure to chemical mixtures creates an unsettling problem. We are all part of an enormous uncontrolled and unmonitored experiment.

How Much Is Too Much?

The assumption that small exposures are harmless underlies more than 10,000 separate regulations set by EPA. Allowing small levels of contamination in food, water and air rests on the presumption that a threshold of harm is well understood. Recent evidence suggests that chemicals may affect the endocrine, immune and nervous system even at very low doses. Some chemicals behave like or block human hormones. Some sensitized individuals experience severe allergic reactions to some substances (such as peanuts or fish) at exceptionally small doses. And others experience a heightened immune response to diverse chemicals—a condition known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Chemical effects on the immune system have rarely been studied prior to their widespread use in commerce, or release to the environment as pollution or wastes.

Susceptibility varies not only between children and adults, but also among children of the same age. It can also vary for an individual child depending upon her or his immune or nutritional status, or other medical conditions.

Chemical Mixtures

Children are routinely exposed to mixtures of carcinogens, neurotoxins, and respiratory irritants. Diesel exhaust, for example contains dozens of chemicals listed as hazardous air pollutants by EPA, including known and probable human carcinogens.12 Producing conclusive evidence that children are endangered is extraordinarily difficult even for single chemicals, and especially for the mixtures experienced daily by children and others. Testing necessary to understand the health effects of being exposed to the mixtures we all experience in daily life has never been attempted. The mixtures themselves are so complex and varied over time that it is usually not possible to identify a consistent pattern of exposure, or to assign blame for illness to a single chemical. Given these conditions, no one can conclude that children are sufficiently protected.

Food

The safety of food is threatened by thousands of chemicals that may remain as residues at the dinner table. These may result from pesticide applications, solvents, and water contaminants. Fish advisories demonstrate the increasing problem of persistent chemicals accumulating in some marine species. Nearly 10,000 separate regulations attempt to limit pesticide residues in the national food supply. Pesticides are deliberately toxic substances, and many are classified as carcinogens or neurotoxins or threaten health in other ways.

The food supply is increasingly international, as juices, oils, grains, meats, fish, fruits, and thousands of other processed foods are imported from other nations each year. These trends increase the need for vigilance against food contamination, increase foreign products in our markets, and introduce new chemicals into the environments of children.13 Our food production and distribution system is now so complex, international, and decentralized that it is vulnerable to accidental contamination and sabotage.

Water

Nearly 70% of the human body is made up of water, and the purity of water we drink is a necessity for human health. Children consume more water than any food. It is commonly added to infant formula, juice concentrates, and grains consumed by young children. Children may be exposed to hazards by drinking contaminated water or food, inhaling water vapors with attached volatile compounds, and absorbing contaminants through the skin while bathing or showering. More than 100 million Americans derive their drinking water from wells that tap into underground water supplies. There are nearly 16 million wells in the U.S. Almost 40 million people in the U.S. derive their water from wells that are neither monitored nor regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).14

Nearly 77 million pounds of 35 different organophosphate insecticides were released to the U.S. environment in the mid 1990’s.

Yearly, almost 60 million pounds are applied to 60 million acres, and 17 million pounds are used for non-agricultural purposes.15 The U.S. Geological Survey has detected the presence of some of these insecticides in water near intensively sprayed areas.16 However, none of these insecticides are monitored or regulated in public or private water supplies. This limited coverage by the SDWA inspires little confidence in the quality of water.

The law was designed to monitor and regulate only listed chemicals, a small set of hazardous chemicals that may reach and contaminate both surface and underground water supplies. Since towns and cities must bear the costs of testing, they commonly oppose additions of hazardous chemicals to the list that must be monitored, or demand that new filtration technologies be employed. These conditions ensure that the list will grow very slowly.

Air

Most estimates of asthma prevalence range between 7-9% or nearly 5 million children.17 The background burden of respiratory disease among U.S. children demands that we reconsider management of air quality in a fundamental way.

Experts in children’s health are increasingly concerned about indoor air quality. American children spend 80-90% of their time indoors, on average.18 Architectural design, building materials, finishes, and furnishings all influence indoor air quality, and respiratory health. The intentional release of fragrances in cleansers, cosmetics, candles, incense, and deodorizers introduces many additional synthetic chemicals to indoor air and most have not been tested for their effect on health. Poorly ventilated heating appliances, such as wood stoves, and tobacco smoke pose a serious threat to respiratory health. Tighter, more energy efficient building designs reduce the exchange between indoor and outdoor air, and may result in the build-up of chemicals that could cause reactions among sensitive children. Indoor cleaning practices may also introduce hundreds of chemicals—including solvents and other volatile organic compounds—into the environments and lungs of children.

It is not clear that outdoor air quality is improving where children spend their time. Perhaps it is getting cleaner where federal and state monitoring facilities are located, however this conclusion depends on what is measured, and how the measurements are averaged. Regulators are required by current law to average pollution across time, and as averaging periods are extended to include the nighttime and weekends when industrial and vehicle emissions are greatly reduced, pollution levels often are reported to be negligible. If urban polluters are allowed to average their emissions with those of rural counties, state levels often appear to create little risk. “Compliance” with federal standards judged by comparing legal limits with pollution averaged in this manner may have little relevance to the health of sensitive individuals.

Outdoor air quality is threatened most by two human activities: energy consumption and industrial emissions. Nearly 200 billion pounds of pollution are released into the air each year.19 Among thousands of individual chemicals, EPA regulates 189 as “hazardous air pollutants”, and only 6 primary pollutants. Many of these are emitted as exhaust from motor vehicles. Children who spend long periods in transit are therefore likely to be more exposed to higher levels of pollution that surround transportation corridors. And pollution levels within vehicles are neither monitored nor regulated by the federal government.

Land Use and Landscape History

Past history of land use often holds important clues to understanding a child’s potential chemical exposure. Orchards in production during the early 20th century may have soils contaminated by lead and arsenic, formerly applied as fungicides. And many former orchards are now residential communities. Landfills are often covered with soil and replanted, and former industrial sites are sometimes torn down. If these landscapes are converted to residential, school or recreational facilities, they may pose a special threat to children’s health. Most hazardous waste or contaminated sites are not easily recognized or publicized, leaving everyone with the need to be vigilant about where they choose to live.

Power plants, sprayed croplands, recreation areas, golf courses, nurseries, shipyards, fuel storage facilities, military bases, bus depots and industrial sites may all pose hidden threats to the health of children.

The list of hazardous waste sites has grown steadily over the past several decades, while the number of restored or cleaned sites has grown sluggishly. Once a site is found to be contaminated, fierce local political debate usually follows, as the dampening effect on surrounding property values is recognized. The public list of sites in need of clean-up will always be smaller than it should be.

Thousands of contaminated sites—both private and public—await clean-up. The Department of Defense recently estimated that it would take 70 years and $20 billion to clean up former defense facilities contaminated by radioactive, hazardous and toxic substances.20 A recent EPA study found that nearly 350,000 children in New England states live within one mile of a National Priority List Superfund Waste Site; and 262 schools lie within one mile of these facilities.21 Several studies have found increased health risks to children who live in close proximity to hazardous waste sites. Studies of individual hazardous waste sites in the U.S. and Europe have shown increased risk of congenital malformations and reductions in birth weight among infants born to parents living near hazardous waste sites. 22 23 And nearly 25% of Americans live within 4 miles of a hazardous waste site.24

The Public’s Right-to-Know

The guiding principle behind government and corporate policies should be: The public has a right-to-know about health hazards in air, water, food, land and consumer product. To recognize hazards, the public must be better informed. This understanding is necessary for parents and other caregivers to identify and avoid significant health threats. Democracy and effective participation in governmental affairs also require this knowledge; and without it, individual freedom is placed at risk.

The primary roadblocks to improvement of environmental quality are the absence of information and its protection by law as confidential and private property. Generating accurate evidence of amounts and locations of hazardous emissions, products and sites could be extremely useful if publicly accessible. An informed public would be better able to protect itself against dangerous exposures.

Some laws fail to demand full product labeling, necessary for consumers to recognize and avoid hazardous products in the marketplace. Other laws plainly protect knowledge of chemical ingredients as “confidential business information” (artificial flavors, inert ingredients in pesticides). Still other laws provide insufficient funding to monitor the quality of air, water, food and consumer products, or trends in childhood illnesses plausibly linked to chemical hazards.

Secrecy is often legally protected. It may take many forms, including the failure to disclose hazardous situations to an unsuspecting public; failure to demand labeling of hazardous products, including ingredients; and failure to track production, distribution and fate of dangerous substances. Together these conditions result in children’s continued exposure to hazardous chemicals—with neither the knowledge nor consent of their parents or caregivers.

Several billion pounds of pesticides and “inert” ingredients are released to indoor and outdoor environments annually.25 Several thousand pesticide products are permitted to be released in homes and schools, and these releases may occur while children and others occupy buildings. Occupants are not normally notified of pesticide applications, or the health threats they impose.

Surveillance is crucial to the public’s right-to-know about environmental hazards. The right-to-know is inhibited if governments do not track chemical production, release to the environment, their use in products, disposal practices and human exposures. Surveillance of human illnesses such as asthma, learning disabilities, autism, and cancer is critically necessary for scientists to research causal relations between exposures and health loss.

Common Sense Solutions

The trends in respiratory diseases, neurological disorders and cancer described previously are deeply disturbing.

When considered together with knowledge of children’s routine exposure to hazards described in the pages that follow, it is apparent that we need to manage the environments of children more cautiously.

A child’s daily exposure to hazardous chemicals could be far lower than it is today. Importantly, it is not necessary to identify each chemical in a child’s environment to offer substantial protection.

Knowing the primary sources of exposure to the most hazardous chemicals, and avoiding them is sufficient to accomplish real risk reduction in the very near term.

Parents, caregivers and other managers of children’s environments can easily learn to recognize and avoid many of the hazards identified in this report.

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