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!
Michigan’s children’s environmental health: Child care and beyond
Michigan’s children’s environmental health: Child care and beyond
Michigan’s child care industry was struggling even before COVID-19. The pandemic and the tumult of this past year has certainly heightened the issues, with child care closures and both parents and child care providers and staff struggling financially. It is of critical importance for Michigan to support families in accessing high quality affordable child care, and to support child care providers in remaining open, safe, and healthy.
It shouldn’t take a pandemic to remind us that child care is essential to children, families, and society. Crises have a way of revealing our problematic oversights and offer opportunities for true progress. Consider environmental health. Harvard researchers found that people exposed to higher levels of air pollution (disproportionately people of color and those living in poverty) are at greater risk from the coronavirus. Yet building the political will to enact protective, equitable environmental health policies is often a struggle. Everyone, and especially all children deserve clean air and water, safe food and products, a stable climate, and healthy places to live, learn, and play.
Eco-Healthy Child Care® (EHCC) assists child care professionals in their efforts to reduce or eliminate environmental hazards, such as lead and pesticides, in and around their facilities. Over this past year we have been guiding providers during this crisis with information about safe and effective cleaning and disinfecting and safe re-opening practices.
While we focus on the child care space, our parent organization, the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN), has been the leading national voice for children’s environmental health across all settings for nearly three decades. Recently, CEHN has embarked on a project to provide a profile of children’s environmental health (CEH) for each of the 50 U.S. states, and Michigan made their first batch of six.
How do you craft a state’s CEH profile? CEHN staff carefully combed through collections of data on environmental hazards, environmental exposures (biomonitoring), and children’s health outcomes and identified 9 children’s environmental health indicators (CEHI) that met their inclusion criteria of being meaningful, regularly collected, robust data that is uniformly defined across all 50 states. This proved difficult, and one key takeaway is the need for more intentional focus on nationally coordinated CEH surveillance at the state and local levels.
You might be wondering how Michigan fared in their CEH profile? Make sure you check it out and share with others in the state. Below are a few key points.
Drinking Water
Michigan’s drinking water gets a lot of attention since the Flint lead crisis, and the CEH profile points out that Michigan has the most PFAS contaminated water sites of the states. However, it is important to note that the state has responded rapidly and strongly via the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team (MPART), a multi-agency collaboration that has provided communities with alternative drinking water sources and filters. Recently, Governor Whitmer announced a $25 million grant program to invest in water infrastructure and projects that remove or reduce contaminants such as PFAS under Michigan’s Clean Water Plan.
Air Quality
While overshadowed by drinking water concerns, Michigan’s air quality is important to note. According to the CEH profile approximately 73% of the state’s children live in counties with unhealthy levels of ozone pollution. This is meaningful, because the profile also imparts that 8.3% of Michigan’s children has asthma (which is exacerbated by, and in some cases even caused by ozone exposure), compared with a nationwide rate of 7.5%.
Climate Change
Climate change has caused Michigan to have warmed 2.7 degrees (F) since the 1970s. Higher temperatures increase the formation of ozone, and lengthen pollen season, contributing to asthma exacerbations. More frequent and hotter days increase children’s risk for heat illnesses, especially those in urban areas and those in homes without air conditioning. Michigan recently became the 9th state to pledge carbon neutrality, as Governor Whitmer declared plans to meet this goal by 2050.
Toxic chemical release and childhood conditions
The state’s rates for childhood cancers and for ADHD/ADD are also above national rates. In addition, according to the CEH profile, 79.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals were disposed of or released in Michigan in 2018. Only one other state out of the 6 states assessed released a greater amount. How might these toxic chemical releases be contributing to the level of childhood disease and disability among Michigan children?
These profiles are designed to help state leaders take stock and then track their progress over time in reducing environmental hazards and improving health outcomes for their youngest residents, and especially those most vulnerable. Nearly 20% of Michigan’s children live in poverty. These children, and children of color, bear disproportionate burdens of pollution and other environmental health risks, and clear and intentional efforts to address poverty and environmental racism must be prioritized.
There are some promising signs for the state’s progress on CEH issues. In addition to some of the governor’s actions on drinking water and carbon neutrality, Michigan has received support from the CDC and ATSDR within the past 5 years for their lead poisoning prevention program, their asthma control program, and their efforts to reduce toxic exposures, as well as for their environmental public health tracking and biomonitoring programs. Federal support to states is critical now more than ever, as the worst months of the pandemic lay before us. Thankfully, it looks as though 2021 may bring eventual relief from the pandemic, and the new year also signals hope for renewed attention to public health and environmental and climate concerns at the federal level. There is a lot of talk about “building back better” post-pandemic. Addressing racism, poverty, pollution, lack of universal affordable accessible high-quality child care, underfunded public health systems, and an economy centered around toxic chemicals and fossil fuels need to be centered in those plans. This would bode well for Michiganders and indeed families and communities in all states across our nation, and especially the children whose very futures require safe and healthy communities to thrive.
See the full Michigan CEH profile.
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!
Protecting Colorado Children’s Health
Protecting Colorado Children’s Health
We are all reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic–grieving the loss of loved ones, of jobs, stability, social gatherings, and peace of mind. And we are struggling to adjust to our “new normal” amidst heightened anxiety and persisting uncertainties. One of the truly sobering takeaways is that this crisis has exposed critical gaps in our nation’s ability to effectively protect our most vulnerable. It is urgent that we act on preventable health outcomes to promote the safest and healthiest futures for our children.
That’s why I’m so excited about the new Colorado State Profile for Children’s Environmental Health from The Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN). CEHN is a national non-profit organization that has been at the frontlines of children’s environmental health for nearly three decades. They are developing profiles for each state around currently available children’s environmental health indicators (CEHIs).
Children’s Environmental Health & CEHIs
Over the past several decades, childhood chronic diseases, such as asthma and leukemias, and developmental conditions, such as attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder, have become far more common in the U.S. Improved testing and genetics do not account entirely for these worrisome trends.The World Health Organization estimates that 34% of all children’s health issues are the result of modifiable environmental factors.
Children are especially vulnerable to environmental exposures because they breathe, eat and drink more than adults, in proportion to their body size. Their bodies and brains are developing and thus at risk from toxic exposures, while in the womb through adolescence. Exposures to harmful toxicants in our water, food, and everyday products (such as lead, pesticides, brominated flame retardants, and PFAS) and to air pollutants (such as particulate matter, mercury, and ozone) increase children’s risk of adverse health and developmental outcomes and exacerbate existing health conditions. Children and pregnant women from low income communities, tribal communities, and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to these harmful toxicants, placing them at higher risk for illness and disability.
Our changing climate intensifies these environmental hazards and exacerbates existing inequalities–bringing stronger storms, extreme heat waves, more numerous and intense wildfires, and flooding. These effects and others threaten our air and water quality, food security, family and community stability, and physical and mental health. Climate change can also set the stage for more pandemics, as droughts and extreme temperatures increase our risks of zoonotic diseases. In the case of COVID-19, environmental factors can also influence a patient’s prognosis. Mounting scientific evidence demonstrates that exposure to air pollutants directly affects our ability to survive a virus that attacks our respiratory system, as is common with many emerging zoonotic diseases.
In order to reduce our children’s risk of illness and disability, federal, state, and local leaders need to address existing environmental hazards and better plan for children’s needs in the face of climate change. Unfortunately, the current federal administration is reversing nearly 100 environmental regulations that influence the health of our families and pose a serious threat to our impact on the climate. It is up to state and local officials to provide the environmental health protections that our children deserve. And it is up to us to speak out, demanding that children’s health be a priority.
For Colorado’s decision-makers to effectively address children’s environmental health concerns they must first understand the current state of these issues in their jurisdiction.Comprehensive information, including state-by-state comparisons of uniformly defined data points (CEHIs) about environmental hazards, environmental exposures, and relevant children’s health outcomes, is needed. Unfortunately there are very few accessible sources of robust, valid, and regularly updated state-level comparisons of CEHIs, but CEHN has compiled the most meaningful ones into their state profiles.
Colorado’s Profile
The Colorado profile offers interesting insights. The first thing that stuck out to me was that nearly 70% of Colorado children live in counties with unhealthy ozone levels as of 2020. Another 12% live in counties that either don’t monitor or have incomplete monitoring data for ozone pollution. That means that over 1 million of our 1.3 million Colorado children could be at risk for air-quality related health issues.
I was also startled that Colorado children are more likely than most in the U.S. to be drinking unclean water. The profile shows that 40% of all public water systems in Colorado reported violations of clean water standards (U.S. average is 31%). These reported violations include health-based violations (for example, exceedances of the maximum contaminant levels or exceedances of the maximum residual disinfectant levels), and monitoring and reporting violations.1
Clean air and water are such foundational human rights. They are at the root of our health and wellbeing. Our state is so rich in natural resources that people travel from all over the country to access our “pristine nature.” Why can’t we offer our children these very basic resources?
Indicators like access to clean air and water set the stage for other health related outcomes that can change the course of a child’s life forever. Mounting scientific research links environmental exposures with risk of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Attention-Deficit Disorder (ADD), and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In 2009, The President’s Cancer Panel’s Annual Report pointed to environmental causes for the worrying increase in the pediatric cancer rate since the ‘70s, which is now the leading disease-related cause of death past infancy in U.S. children. Poor outdoor air quality, including high concentrations of ground-level ozone, are linked with the exacerbation of children’s respiratory illnesses, including asthma, as well as the survivability of respiratory illnesses like COVID-19. These issues are all related. They all stem from the places in which our children play, live, and go to school, the food, water, clothes, and toys we give them, the ways in which we clean our homes, and what industries surround our neighborhoods.
As with the COVID-19 pandemic, our least privileged communities shoulder the worst of environmental hazards. Poverty is an important social determinant of health, and one that disproportionately affects indigenous communities and communities of color. As of 2019, 12% of Colorado’s children were living in poverty. They are less likely to be able to access quality health care, electrical power, nutritious food, and safe drinking water. They are also likely to live in unsafe homes and are more likely to learn, play, and live adjacent to polluting industries.
In addition, they are often left untested for associated exposures. For example, CEHN’s profile shows that 1% of Colorado’s children tested positive for elevated blood lead levels (BLL) in 2016, but if you read the footnotes you’ll see that only 6.6% of Colorado children under age 6 were tested. It’s also worth considering that not all children who are tested get reported to public health authorities, so the true scope of children’s lead poisoning in our state is likely higher. By the way, CEHN’s profile includes lots of helpful context, scientific studies, and links to more information, both in the report itself and on their website.
Developing comprehensive, uniformly-defined children’s environmental health indicators and regularly collecting and updating the data is critical to creating strong child-protective policies and to track our progress as we improve our children’s health. All of Colorado’s children deserve a safe and healthy environment to grow and develop. They need clean air to breathe and safe water to drink, nutritious food to eat, and healthy places in which to live, learn, and play. We know this is possible. In order to make it a reality we must hold our elected officials at all levels of government accountable and demand increased investment in under-resourced communities, in our crumbling infrastructure, and in our public health systems. We need to respect the interconnectedness of environmental and human health and prioritize the health of our planet so that our children and future generations have the healthiest possible start to life.
Looking for ways to get involved? Children’s Environmental Health Day is on October 8th this year. Demand that children’s health be put at the center of governmental issues: request a proclamation from Colorado’s governor or from your mayor. You can also host or join into a children’s environmental health day activity with your family, church, scout troop, or neighbors. Get ideas at www.cehn.org/cehday/
