Two Decades of Enhancing Children’s Environmental Health Protection at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Introduction Children do not react like adults when exposed to environmental chemicals because their organ systems and metabolic capabilities are not fully developed. Children eat, breathe, and drink more, relative to their body mass, than adults. Their exposures to environmental chemicals differ from that of adults due to child-specific behaviors, such as hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth activities, crawling on the ground, and breastfeeding. Meanwhile, research shows that exposures to environmental chemicals in homes, schools, food, and common household products may be associated with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, attention-deficit disorders, learning disabilities, and autism (OUP 2013). The efforts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enhance consideration of the potential for early-life susceptibility stem from the 1993 National Research Council’s “Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children” (NRC 1993) and the subsequent 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA 1996). Twenty years ago, this legislative change to the regulation of pesticides initiated an unprecedented drive by the U.S. EPA to explicitly consider the unique exposure pathways of children versus those of adults. This summer, President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (2016), which reforms the 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act (1976) by directing the U.S. EPA to make an affirmative finding on the safety of a new chemical or a significant new use of an existing chemical before it is allowed into the marketplace. These revisions, 40 years in the making, provide a fresh opportunity for the U.S. EPA to further protect children’s environmental health by requiring the agency to address unreasonable risks to those who may be the most susceptible including children and pregnant women.