EPA Issues Second Report on Trends in
Protecting Children’s Health
Shows Good News in Blood Lead Levels and Secondhand Smoke Exposure
February 24, 2003
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Whitman
has announced the release of “America’s Children and the Environment:
Measures of Contaminants, Body Burdens, and Illnesses", the Agency’s second
report on trends in environmental factors related to the health and
well-being of children in the United States.
Drawing on information from various sources, the report shows trends in
environmental contaminant levels in air, water, food, and soil;
concentrations of contaminants measured in the bodies of children and women;
and childhood illnesses which may be influenced by exposure to environmental
contaminants.
“Protecting children’s health is an integral part of EPA’s mission, and
the Agency has taken great strides to improve the environment for children
where they live, learn, and play,” said Whitman. “As we move forward, EPA is
committed to monitoring the success of our children’s health efforts. The
“America’s Children and the Environment” report, is based on the best
available data and will help guide our future actions and measure progress.
As our data and methods improve, we will work to develop increasingly
reliable children’s environmental health indicators that help us reach our
children’s health goals.”
EPA’s report data help identify, track and evaluate potential
environmental impacts on children’s health. Ultimately these measurements
will help guide our efforts to minimize environmental impacts on the
nation’s children and also will inform discussions among policymakers and
the public about how to improve federal data.
The “America’s Children and the Environment” report contains good news
for children including the continued decline in the number of children with
elevated blood lead levels and a reduction in children’s exposure to
secondhand smoke. Despite these findings, issues of concern remain. The
report includes the following highlights:
• Removing lead from gasoline proved to be one of the more important
public health interventions for children since EPA’s creation. Through the
late 1990s, EPA continued to see a decrease in the blood lead concentrations
of children primarily due to the phase-out of lead in paint.
• There has been a decrease in the children’s exposure to environmental
tobacco smoke, as indicated through direct measurements of markers for
exposure in children’s blood and through surveys of smoking habits in
children’s homes.
• There have been modest decreases in children’s exposures to excessive
levels of air pollution and contaminants in drinking water.
• EPA remains concerned about children potentially exposed to mercury in
the womb. About 8 percent of women of childbearing age in the United States
have concentrations of mercury in their body at levels of potential concern.
This is the first time that CDC reported information about mercury in women
of child-bearing age, thus providing a snapshot of information about blood
mercury levels for this report. As a result, it is not known if the levels
have gone up or down from the past and the Agency plans to report trends in
future reports. To reduce mercury releases, EPA has adopted a multi-media
integrated approach. This includes reducing air emissions, limiting
discharges to water, removing mercury from batteries and paint, and
developing mercury emission control technologies. These efforts also
include, under the Clean Air Act, cutting emissions by over 90 percent from
two of the three largest categories of sources, municipal waste combustion
and medical waste incineration. EPA is also very active internationally in
efforts to reduce emissions and use of mercury. To do so, the United States
is working with Mexico and Canada, as well as the United Nations
Environmental Program.
• In 2001, 9 percent of all children in the United States had asthma (6.3
million children) and about 6 percent of all children had experienced an
asthma attack in the previous 12 months.
EPA continues its efforts to reduce emissions of diesel pollutants from
trucks and buses, which helps prevent hundreds of thousands of asthma
attacks in children each year. EPA also continues to take preventive action,
such as our work with the industry to ensure playground equipment is no
longer made with arsenic-containing preservative wood. Under the President’s
Clear Skies proposal, EPA also will work to reduce asthma attacks and
respiratory infections. Clear Skies would dramatically reduce power plant
emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury emissions.
The full report on “America’s Children and the Environment” is available
at:
www.epa.gov/envirohealth/children.
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