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Protecting Children’s Health
Monday, October 21, 2003
NCER Staff Writer
WASHINGTON (NCER) - As humans mature from fetus to adulthood, the physical, chemical, and biological
processes that make up our growth and metabolism also mature
and develop. These years of change in a developing infant and child affect
the way chemicals are absorbed and how much of the chemical reaches target
organs of the body. Children also exhibit certain behaviors – such
as crawling on the floor, playing outdoors, and putting things in their
mouths – that make them more vulnerable to exposure to toxic environmental
chemicals.
To protect the health of our children, we need research that is broad, multi-disciplinary, and forward-thinking to address diverse environmental contaminants, diseases, developmental stages, cultural influences, and the social and economic realities of children of nearly every walk of life. Since 1998, EPA in partnership with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has funded eight university-based research centers exclusively focused on children’s health. The centers study the causes and mechanisms of children’s disorders having an environmental cause, e.g., asthma, other respiratory distress illness, and developmental delays due to pesticide exposure.
In 2001, EPA and NIEHS added four new children’s centers to investigate the role of toxic exposures in the development of autism, hyperactivity, and neurological development and behavior. More than 5,000 children are involved in these studies, in urban and suburban communities along the East Coast, the Great Lakes region,, and agricultural communities in Washington State and California. The next goal will be to translate the findings of this research for public policy, local needs, and information for the health care community and the general public.
Centers of Excellence in Children's
Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research
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EPA’s children’s health centers are unique for several reasons:
- They incorporate a high degree of community involvement in their research, encouraging participation when data are gathered and building local understanding needed to reduce children’s contaminant intake.
- The studies offer the potential for safer, less expensive, and less cumbersome protective measures designed to suit a local situation, such as forms of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).
- Their use of biomarkers – the testing of bodily fluids and tissues such as urine, blood, fingernails, and breastmilk – is proving to be more reliable than traditional measures of pollution exposure such as breath tests, questionnaires, and environmental monitoring data
- Most of the centers are tracking children’s environmental exposure before birth, providing an invaluable benchmark against which to measure pollution’s impacts over the years.
- The centers are integrating nontraditional disciplines into their research processes to propel the research more rapidly.
Some examples of the research results from these centers include:
Environmental Exposures and Low Birth Weights. STAR researchers at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health found that air contaminants in Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx boroughs of New York City are linked to lower birth weights and smaller skulls in African-American babies, according to their long-term study on the unusually high rate of childhood asthma in those areas. African-American women exposed during their third trimester of pregnancy to higher levels of everyday pollutants in automobile exhaust, cigarette smoke, and incinerators tended to have smaller babies with smaller average skulls. Low birth weight and skull size have been linked to a number of developmental problems in children.
Web Resources for Environmental Risks to Children. The STAR Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research (CCEHRR) at the University of Washington-Seattle has completed a review of Internet resources that provide information on the toxic effects of pollution on children health and development. The researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of these Internet resources in providing information on the risks associated with environmental exposures to pregnant women. These resources will also increase the availability of environmental health information to health care professionals, allowing them to make more accurate estimates of the potential risks for their patients.
Pesticide Exposure and Pregnant Women in the Salinas Valley. The STAR Center for Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) at the University of California, Berkeley has completed a 5-year study of multiple pesticide exposures experienced by over 600 pregnant women in the nation’s most productive agricultural region. Using these data and EPA’s Exposure Assessment Guidelines, CHAMACOS scientists have confirmed that a significant portion of these women and their children are exposed to commonly used pesticides at levels that exceed EPA standards. The researchers are now testing the effectiveness of an intensive “Healthy Homes” intervention project in the community to raise awareness and prevent exposures to developing children.
Some additional examples of other ongoing research being conducted at the children’s centers include:
The Center for Childhood Neurotoxicology and Exposure Assessment, University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey, is examining the interaction between autism and environmental chemicals.
The Mount Sinai Center for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, is studying contaminants and neurodevelopmental impairment in inner-city children.
The Children’s Environmental Health Center, University of Southern California, is investigating the effects of the environment on children’s respiratory health, with a focus on asthma and allergic airway disease.
The Friends Children’s Environmental Health Center, University of Illinois at Urbana, is studying the impact on children of exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and methyl mercury.
The Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center,
University of Iowa, has already found that rural children experience
a similar incidence and severity of asthma to that of urban, inner city
children.
More information on the STAR Children’s Environmental Health
and Disease Prevention Research Centers and each of their research
projects can be found through NCER’s Center
page on this site.
More information on EPA’s children’s environmental health
initiatives and programs can be found through EPA’s Office of
Children’s Health Protection and the Children’s Health
Month web sites.