EPA's focus on kids' environmental health lapses

The Government Accountability Office released a report stating that the EPA's commitment to keeping children safe from toxic chemicals has lapsed in the last decade. Click here for USA article.

Children breathe more air in proportion to their weight than do adults, and because their bodies are still developing toxic chemicals affect them more profoundly. Exposures to chemicals today portend a "flood of chronic disease" tomorrow, said Ted Schettler, science director for the advocacy group Science and Environmental Health Network.

Today's EPA is making many changes to protect the health of our children.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., was more pointed. He said efforts to protect children from environmental hazards "ground to a halt during the Bush administration" and the EPA office for children's health "withered on the vine."
"The good news is: Things have turned around," he said.

The EPA stated in this article in USA today on March 5th, air testing near schools is a priority.

On Tuesday, for instance, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sent a memo to her staff reminding them that "protecting children's environmental health is central to our work at EPA."

"Let me reaffirm that it is EPA's policy to consider the health of pregnant women, infants and children consistently and explicitly in all activities we undertake related to human-health protection, both domestically and internationally," the memo said. "We must be diligent in our efforts to ensure that dangerous exposures and health risks to children are prevented."

Let's hope they start right here in Flower Mound.