Good Health Depends on a Safe and Healthy Home
June is Healthy Homes Month! Ensure your child care space is safe by improving indoor air quality. Learn tips for reducing chemicals, improving ventilation, and more.
Eliminating a Brain Damaging Pesticide is a Win for Children’s Health
Chlorpyrifos is finally off the market—a big win for kids’ health. Learn how to reduce pesticide exposure in child care with safer IPM practices.
Quality Child Care and Environmental Health
Quality Child Care and Environmental Health
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a heightened focus in child care settings on maintaining safe and effective cleaning, disinfecting and ventilation practices. This is important for not only children’s health but also for staff safety.
The National Accreditation Commission for Early Care and Education Programs offers early childhood leaders the opportunity to demonstrate and document quality performance using research-based criteria and evidence-based practices. The National Accreditation Commission provides a comprehensive, ongoing quality improvement system that recognizes the inherent diversity among programs through the self-study and award process. Over 1,300 early learning programs in 35 states, the District of Columbia and overseas participate. The National Accreditation Commission recently comprehensively incorporated environmental health best practices into their accreditation standards. These new standards can help providers maintain a safe and healthy child care facility during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Eco-Healthy Child Care® (EHCC) program worked with the National Accreditation Commission to update the standards. The updated standards are based upon EHCC’s eco-healthy checklist. EHCC endorses facilities (center and family child care) who comply with 24 of 30 simple, free or low-cost environmentally healthy best practices found on the checklist.
Below are some National Accreditation Commission standards relevant to safer ventilation, cleaning and disinfecting practices.
National Accreditation Commission Standard: D13. Steps are taken to ensure that indoor and outdoor air quality is monitored.
- Adequate ventilation is maintained by using an HVAC system, fans, and/or open screened windows.
- HVAC filters are changed or cleaned at least every 3 months or more often if indicated by manufacturer’s guidelines.
National Accreditation Commission Standard D17: Least-toxic cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products are consistently used according to manufacturers’ instructions.
- Sanitizer/disinfectant other than household bleach is used:
- Sanitizer/disinfectant is EPA registered.
- Sanitizer/disinfectant is the least toxic option for use around children.
- Sanitizer/disinfectant is prepared and used according to manufacturer’s instructions, including appropriate contact time.
- The sanitizer/disinfectant is only used for its intended purpose and in strict accordance with all label instructions.
To learn more about safer cleaning, disinfecting and ventilation best practices related to early care and education and COVID-19, access EHCC’s free fact sheets which are user-friendly and include links to numerous science-based resources. Share these EHCC fact sheets with your colleagues and the families you serve.
If you are looking for an interactive learning experience EHCC’s newly updated Protecting Children’s Environmental Health e-course is a great resource. The e-course provides no-to-low cost strategies for preventing children and staff from unnecessary exposures to harmful chemicals found in cleaning products, plastics, and furnishings, among other hazards.
The Protecting Children’s Environmental Health course is approved for adult learning clock hours in 48 states. Fulfill your hours and gain a better understanding of what environmental hazards may be found in and around your child care facility.
SAVE the DATE! On April 29th at 1pm ET EHCC and the Association for Early Learning Leaders/National Accreditation Commission will be hosting a webinar on children’s environmental health and NAC’s new accreditation standards.
EPA’s Lead & Copper Rule: Requirements for Schools & Child Care
EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule: Requirements for Schools and Child Care
CEHN raises awareness on the harmful effects to children from lead exposure, and we do our best to provide simple and low-to-no cost steps that families, care givers, and child care providers can take to reduce children’s exposure to lead hazards.
While lead-based paint hazards are the primary source of lead exposure to children in the U.S., lead in drinking water also contributes to a child’s body burden of the neurotoxic heavy metal, and is an especially important source for infants less than one year of age. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates lead in publicly supplied drinking water through the Lead & Copper Rule (LCR), and in December of 2020, the agency finalized a revised LCR.
A new focus area has been added to this revised LCR—specifically the requirement to test the drinking water lead levels in elementary schools and licensed child care facilities. We applaud this recognition of early care and learning settings as important environments that may contribute significantly to children’s cumulative exposures.
However, the rule isn’t perfect. Community water systems are not required to test all taps used for consumption in schools and child care facilities, which could lead to missed hazards and a false sense of security. In addition, utilities are only required to test each elementary school and licensed child care facilitiy once during a 5-year testing cycle. Thereafter, testing would be by request only. Secondary schools must request testing, despite the fact that older children and adults, especially pregnant women, are harmed by lead exposures too. And the rule did not lower the lead “action level” in water, which at 15 parts per billion (ppb), is not a health-based standard. We know that there is no safe level of lead exposure. Thus, even if the few tested taps have lead levels below 15ppb, school and child care administrators should continue to adopt routine practices to reduce lead levels to as close as possible to 0ppb. Lastly, some schools and child care facilities have known lead service lines, which contribute the greatest percentage of lead to the tap. Full replacement of these lines should precede testing, in order to determine if internal plumbing fixtures are contributing to lead levels.
The Biden Administration put a regulatory freeze on the LCR before it went into effect. The rule is being reviewed, and it may end up being dismantled or changed. However, utilities and municipalities are already beginning to make plans to work towards compliance with the rule. It is important for cities, communities, school districts, and school and child care administrators to know about the rule and its implications, requirements, gaps, and opportunities in order to best protect children’s health.
In order to learn more about the LCR and its implications for schools and child care programs, make sure to register for our free townhall:
EPA’s Lead & Copper Rule: What Schools and Child Care Need to Know
April 21, 1:00 – 2:30 pm ET
This is the 2nd installment of our 3-part virtual townhall series on lead in drinking water, aimed to motivate the public health community to help accelerate the elimination of lead hazards in drinking water. You do not to be a public health professional to attend. Anyone interested in learning more about the LCR and lead in drinking water, please join us for the full series!
February is National Cancer Prevention Month
February is National Cancer Prevention Month
By Kathy Attar, MPH, Engagement Manager, Eco-Healthy Child Care®
Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among children in the U.S. Reducing children’s exposure to harmful chemicals like pesticides can help lower their risk of getting cancer.
Children may be exposed to pesticides by: playing on treated floors, lawns, and play structures; eating pesticide-treated foods; or drinking contaminated water. When pesticides are applied indoors as a spray or aerosol, small droplets can end up on carpets, floors, toys and other surfaces. Children then come into contact with these droplets by crawling or mouthing objects.
To lower pesticide exposures and control pests in your child care facility use Integrated pest management (IPM). IPM is an effective, environmentally sensitive and affordable strategy to control pests and weeds. IPM uses pest prevention practices like eliminating food and water sources and blocking entryways as ways to reduce chemical pesticide use. IPM gives you the tools to create your own plan of action.
Many pesticides can take a very long time to break down. They can persist indoors for weeks on furniture, toys and other surfaces and for years in household dust. Pesticide levels in indoor air are often higher than those found in outdoor air.
Find out more information about IPM and pesticide exposures in EHCC’s newly updated pesticides fact sheet.
To protect ALL children’s health, we must move beyond individual changes towards broader systems change. Our learning, health, and work sectors must adopt practices and policies to reduce toxic chemicals exposures.
A 30%+ increase in the rate of childhood cancer diagnoses since 1975, has led scientists, health professionals, businesses, and advocates to form The Childhood Cancer Prevention Initiative whose goal is to highlight the link between environmental factors and children’s health and bring about cross-sector policy change.
The Initiative released a new report: Childhood Cancer: Cross-Sector Strategies for Prevention that calls for the establishment of a National Childhood Cancer Prevention Research Agenda and National Childhood Cancer Prevention Plan to eradicate toxic chemicals linked to childhood cancers.
You can help make a change by supporting The Childhood Cancer Prevention Initiative–sign their letter of support today!
Racial Healing and Environmental Justice
Racial Healing and Environmental Justice
Children from low-income communities and communities of color often have greater risk of exposures to pollution, higher levels of contaminants in their bodies, and more illness or disability such as asthma and learning disabilities. These high risk children are also experiencing the direct and indirect impacts of climate change the most and hardest.
Structural racism has led to the disparate impact of hazardous waste sites, polluting facilities and poor quality housing stock being located in or near neighborhoods with high concentrations of Black and brown people and economically disadvantaged populations.
The COVID-19 pandemic points a spotlight on the impact systemic racism has had on Black and brown communities’ health–leading to poorer health outcomes and increased mortality.
The National Day of Racial Healing which occurs every year on the Tuesday following Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time for action on #HowWeHeal from the impacts of racism. It is hosted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and was created with the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation community partners. Racial healing is at the core of racial equity. The National Day of Racial Healing provides an opportunity for ALL communities to come together to create a more just world.
The effects of racism are evident in the health, economic and environmental policies all around us and the places in which we live, learn, work and play. People experience these effects when they take their children to child care or school, when they try to rent or buy a home in a safe and non-polluting neighborhood, and when they deal with the impacts of increased flooding, a rising heat index, and contaminated water and soil from climate change.
The home-based Flores Family Child Care facility is located in East Los Angeles, a community made up of primarily Latinx families with over 26% of the population living below the federal poverty line. Many families with young children in East L.A. live in older and often over‐crowded housing, which is often associated with elevated environmental health risks to children. Numerous major freeways also surround the community, which pollute the air. Compared to Los Angeles County, East L.A. is disproportionately affected by health problems linked to the environment including childhood asthma.
Between 2017 and 2019, Flores Family Child Care noticed how the majority of children in their care were frequently ill. In May 2019, a University of Southern California study found significantly elevated levels of lead in the teeth of children living in five L.A. neighborhoods including Flores’s. Lead is a known neurotoxicant, and particularly harmful to children and babies. Also located in this area, Exide Technologies’ battery recycling plant and its predecessors emitted lead and other dangerous pollutants for decades. These harmful emissions have left homes, apartments, schools, parks and child care facilities in the local area with dangerously high levels of lead contaminated soil. Fortunately, Flores Family Child Care was able to have the lead removed from their facility’s’s grounds. Their facility is also an Eco-Healthy Child Care® endorsed home-based child care. They protect children from environmental health risks by preventing vehicles from idling in the parking area as well as in pick-up and drop-off locations, thus decreasing exposure to air pollutants. Flores Family Child Care improves their indoor air quality by using furniture with fewer harmful chemicals and low-volatile organic compound paint on the facility’s walls.
We applaud child care providers like Flores Family Child Care who are protecting children and staff from environmental hazards in early learning settings. However, to bring about environmental justice we need our housing, education, and health systems, among others, to eliminate indoor and outdoor air pollution and climate risks.
East L.A. is just one example of how communities across the U.S. have suffered and continue to suffer the health effects of systemic racism. Racial healing recognizes the need to tell the truth about past wrongs created by individual and systemic racism and address the present impacts. It can build authentic relationships that bridge divides created by real and perceived differences. It is essential to pursue racial healing prior to making change in a community and to truly work toward the protection of all children.
Take action and begin the racial healing conversation in your community this year!
Moving the Child Care Field Forward-Updated Environmental Health Standards
Moving the Child Care Field Forward-Updated Environmental Health Standards
By Kathy Attar, Engagement Manager, Eco-Healthy Child Care®
BIG NEWS!!! The Association for Early Learning Leaders (AELL) has recently released updated accreditation standards for center-based child care providers. These new standards are now more inclusive of children’s environmental health.
The Eco-Healthy Child Care® program worked with AELL to ensure environmental health best practices were included in their newly updated standards. For example, AELL recommends monitoring indoor air quality by: ensuring adequate ventilation is maintained by using an HVAC system and/or opening screened windows; avoiding conditions that lead to excess moisture; and not using aerosols, among other best practices. Protecting children from outdoor air pollution can be done by checking the Air Quality Index and instituting an anti-idling policy, in addition to other strategies.
A primary AELL goal is to ensure high quality child care programs for young children. One way they do this is by accrediting center-based facilities. Their updated accreditation standards reflect current research and evidence-based practices within the early learning field. For example, including information and strategies to reduce air pollution in order to protect children’s health.
All national child care accreditation standards are voluntary strategies for improving the quality of child care. There currently are no mandated national regulations related to environmental health in child care facilities. Some states require child care facilities to test for lead in water and paint, or require facilities to test for radon, but more often than not, environmental health is not comprehensively addressed in child care licensing requirements.
EHCC’s work to incorporate environmental health best practices within national child care accreditation–AELL’s and the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s— as well as within the National Center for Healthy and Safety in Child Care and Early Education’s (NRC) Caring for Our Children’s health and safety standards is a path towards strengthening local child care licensing. When local licensing agencies are seeking to update regulations they often look to accreditation and NRC’s Caring for Our Children’s health and safety standards for model practices that have been agreed upon by subject matter experts.
High quality child care must include considerations for the health and safety of the children and staff–environmental health is a key part in ensuring our children and the people who care for them are free of exposures to potential environmental pollutants.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for comprehensive and safer strategies to address cleaning, disinfecting and indoor air quality in child care. Many of Eco-Healthy Child Care® ‘s cleaning and disinfecting best practices found on our checklist align with the Center’s Disease Control’s COVID-19 best practices for keeping child care facilities safe during the pandemic. We have also developed NEW user-friendly and science based COVID-19 fact sheets for child care professionals on cleaning, disinfecting and indoor air quality (available in both English and Spanish).
Are you a child care provider looking to create a child care environment free of environmental hazards such as: BPA, pesticides or lead? Get Eco-Healthy Child Care® Endorsed!
As an Eco-Healthy Child Care® endorsed provider you will create and maintain a child care facility that is healthy and safe by reducing children’s exposure to environmental hazards like lead in paint and water, unsafe plastics and toxic chemicals found in cleaning supplies.
Celebrating Children’s Environmental Health Day
Celebrating Children’s Environmental Health Day
By Hester Paul, M.S., National Director, Eco-Healthy Child Care®
Thursday, October 8, 2020 was Children’s Environmental Health Day (CEH Day). CEH Day is a platform for ALL of us advocating for healthier places for children to live, learn, and play. It is a way to increase visibility, educate decision makers, and create real change for children’s health.
This year the Eco-Healthy Child Care ® (EHCC) program celebrated CEH Day by organizing a panel of early care and education professionals.
Our panelists included Hester Paul, National Director of EHCC, Sue Kowaleski, Coordinator, Southern Adirondack Child Care Network, Michelle Barnes, Executive Director of the Helen Walton Children’s Enrichment Center, and Nicole Garro, Director, Early Childhood Health at Child Care Aware of America. Collectively the group has over 50 years of experience working to improve the quality of child care across the U.S.
Panelists talked about why children’s environmental health is so important to their work as child care professionals. The Helen Walton Children’s Enrichment Center became engaged in environmental health when several of the children they served were diagnosed with cancer. This sparked them to look at their practices and the facility itself to reduce environmental hazards in order to protect the health of children and staff.
Panelists also spoke of the pandemics impact on the child care field. Both Sue and Nicole highlighted how Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies have heard from child care providers about the challenges of obtaining safer cleaning and disinfecting products for their facilities given the increased focus on cleaning protocols. Providers are also seeking straight forward and science-based advice about how to safely run a child care facility during the pandemic. To help meet this new need Child Care Aware of America has developed a coronavirus resource hub for child care providers and is providing technical assistance to child care centers across the U.S.
Child care providers have always been integral to families’ overall health and well-being. During the COVID-19 pandemic child care professionals continue to play a key role in supporting essential workers. However, the pandemic has increased pressure on the already overburdened child care system. Many providers are closing their facilities because of economic pressures while others are struggling to stay open.
The CEH Day panel did believe the pandemic could bring a renewed focus on environmental health within the child care field–offering an opportunity to disseminate EHHC‘s message to a wider audience.
To assist providers in protecting their health and safety along with the children they care for during the pandemic, EHCC has created user-friendly and science-based materials in English and Spanish, based upon CDC’s COVID-19 guidance for cleaning, disinfecting and indoor air quality in child care facilities.
Listen to the CEH Day child care panel on our YouTube page and access our newly created COVID-19 fact-sheets (English and Spanish) on safer cleaning and disinfecting and indoor air quality on our COVID-19 resource page.
Celebrating 48 Years of the Clean Water Act
Celebrating 48 Years of the Clean Water Act
October 18th marked the 48th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act was a long-awaited reaction to the irresponsible dumping of pollution into our waterways. When the Act was passed, nearly two-thirds of the country’s lakes, rivers and coastal waters had become unsafe, polluted with untreated sewage, oil, trash, chemicals, and other industrial waste.
As we celebrate this anniversary, it is also a rallying call to protect the progress made so far, and to hold our elected officials accountable. Even today, 39% of American rivers, 45% of our lakes, and 51% of the estuaries monitored in the US are contaminated. In fact, the current administration has continued to work relentlessly to undermine the protections provided by the Clean Water Act for the past 48 years. They have rolled back vital safeguards and given corporate polluters access to wage an assault on our public health and safety.
Clean water is fundamental to public health. This year, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, clean water has become even more central to protecting our nation’s health. Just as black and brown communities have borne the brunt of COVID-19, low income communities and communities of color are often disproportionately impacted by polluted water. These communities are also the ones most immediately impacted by climate change, which poses an increasing threat to our water sources.
Water equity, just like health equity, matters. The ability to access safe water for drinking, cleaning, cooking, and enjoying is absolutely necessary to cultivate happy, healthy communities, where all are able to thrive and reach their full potential. Access to clean water is a fundamental right that every child in this country should be afforded. Our leaders have a moral obligation to protect and uphold this right. We cannot hope to accomplish justice for all if we do not protect safeguards for the water on which our communities and our children depend, like the Clean Water Act.
Children are especially vulnerable to environmental hazards like water pollution. Their bodies are still developing, so a smaller dose of a pollutant can have a bigger impact than on an adult and can have long-lasting physical and mental impacts on a child’s life course. For instance, childhood lead exposure from polluted water sources can damage a child’s brain and nervous system, slow their growth and development, and cause learning and behavior problems and lowered IQ.
Much like our water sources, our children are some of our most valuable resources, yet their health and that of their families and communities have not been at the forefront of our nation’s policies and programs. The Children’s Environmental Health Network’s 2020 Voter Guide helps engaged citizens assess their local, state, and federal candidates’ commitment to five key issues: Children’s Health and Equity, Climate Action, Clean Air, Clean Water, and Toxic-free Environments and Products.
The 2020 elections offer an opportunity to reset our national, state, and local priorities and to put children’s health and their environment at the center of decision-making, including prioritizing clean water for all. Please use this resource as you go to the polls this fall, and share it widely, especially with those who may not be familiar with water quality and children’s environmental health issues. Let’s celebrate the Clean Water Act’s anniversary by uniting at the polls for equity, and a clean and healthy environment for ALL children!
An Ounce of Prevention
An Ounce of Prevention
By Kathy Attar, Engagement Manager, Eco-Healthy Child Care®
As a parent, or caregiver, when you buy products for your children, you expect them to be safe. A 2019 Washington state investigation of children’s products bought on Amazon found that to be untrue. Tests identified dangerous levels of lead and other heavy metals including cadmium in certain children’s costume jewelry and school supplies.
Lead exposure is unsafe at any level. Ingesting tiny (often microscopic) concentrations can permanently damage the developing brains of children.
A new study from Case Western Reserve University followed 10,000 children who experienced elevated blood-lead levels before age 3 through age 23. The study found that adults who had experienced childhood lead poisoning were more likely to be incarcerated, experience homelessness and rely on public assistance than children who had not been poisoned by lead. The study also highlights the demographics that are more likely to experience childhood lead poisoning–the rate of elevated blood-lead levels was highest in Black students.
Black and brown communities are more likely to experience childhood lead poisoning as a result of long-standing structural racism. Structural racism has led to the disparate impact of hazardous waste sites, polluting facilities and poor quality housing stock being located in or near neighborhoods with high concentrations of black and brown people and economically disadvantaged populations.
Structural racism is a term for the many systemic factors that work to produce and maintain racial inequities in the U.S. These aspects of our history and culture allow the privileges associated with “whiteness” and the disadvantages associated with “color” to remain deeply embedded within U.S. public policies and institutional practices.
This latest Case Western Reserve University study reinforces the importance of preventing childhood lead poisoning.
The Lead-Safe Toolkit for Home-Based Child Care helps families and child care providers reduce lead hazards within home settings. The Toolkit is a result of Eco-Healthy Child Care®’s partnership with the National Center for Healthy Housing and the National Association of Family Child Care. It is filled with FREE resources including an eye-catching poster and user-friendly worksheets (soon to also be available in Spanish) that provide easy-to-follow steps for finding out if lead hazards exist in the home and what to do to reduce any exposures.
Exposure to lead in the home can create long-lasting health issues for children including: learning disabilities and loss of IQ. Sources of lead can include: paint, dust, water, soil and consumer products.
Certain children’s items are known to have a higher risk of containing lead, such as: inexpensive metal costume jewelry, antique toys and imported toys. Children, especially infants and toddlers, can mouth these unsafe products–inadvertently ingesting pieces and/or inhaling lead-contaminated dust from these play items – which can then cause irreversible harm. Preventing exposures is key to protecting children’s health.
One quick and easy tip to reduce lead hazards is to stay up-to-date on product recalls by visiting the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Checking out CPSC’s website on a regular basis is a great way to keep children safe from lead-contaminated consumer products.
Learn more affordable and effective tips for protecting children from lead in the home setting in the FREE Lead-Safe Toolkit.
