Environmental Contaminants

Tracking environmental contaminants is an important step toward determining whether environmental policies protect children. This section of the site presents information about environmental contaminants that can affect children and discusses how levels of these contaminants in the environment have changed over time.

Pollutants or contaminants that can affect the health of children can be found in air, water, food, and soil. This section includes measures for contaminants in these media. Most of the measures show the percentages of children who may be at risk from exposure to critical concentrations of pollutants.

America’s Children and the Environment does not assess quantitative relationships between the measures for environmental contaminants and childhood illnesses. It includes a qualitative discussion of the research that has looked at some of these relationships.

The measures in this section do not account for many environmental contaminants that are important for children but lack nationally representative data. Such contaminants include those in dusts and soils in and near homes, and contaminants in soil from sources other than Superfund sites. The measure on food contaminants addresses only a few of the contaminants found in foods: selected pesticides used on certain items of produce. The measure does not account for pathways, other than the diet, by which children are exposed to pesticides. For example, pesticides may be transported into homes from outdoors or from the workplace on skin, clothing, or shoes. Children then may ingest pesticides when they put their hands in their mouths after touching contaminated surfaces or when they put objects in their mouths that have been contaminated with pesticides.

The data used to develop the measures within this section vary in coverage and completeness, as summarized in the table below.

Coverage of Environmental Contaminant Measures

Outdoor Pollutants
Topic	Description of Measure	Year(s)	Geographic Coverage	Notes
Common Air Pollutants	E1: Percentage of children living in counties in which air quality standards were exceeded	1993-2006	County-level data	Measure includes five common (criteria) air pollutants. Many counties monitored only some common air pollutants and some counties did not monitor any.
	E2: Percentage of children’s days with good, moderate, or unhealthy air quality	1993-2006	County-level data	Measure includes five common air pollutants.
	E3: Long-term trends in annual average concentrations of criteria pollutants	1993-2006	County-level data	Measure includes three common air pollutants.
Hazardous Air Pollutants	E4: Percentage of children living in counties where estimated hazardous air pollutant concentrations were greater than health benchmarks in 1996	1999	County-level data	Data for one year only; measure is based on estimates of ambient concentrations of 33 of the 188 hazardous air pollutants identified in the Clean Air Act.

 

Indoor Air Pollutants
Topic	Description of Measure	Year(s)	Geographic Coverage	Notes
Environmental Tobacco Smoke	E5: Percentage of homes with children under 7 where someone smokes regularly	1994-2003	National-level data	Measure is a surrogate for environ- mental tobacco smoke in the home. Other indoor pollutants (e.g., combustion products, volatile organic compounds) would be relevant to include if data could be identified.

 

Drinking Water Contaminants
Topic	Description of Measure	Year(s)	Geographic Coverage	Notes
Drinking Water Contaminants	E6: Percentage of children living in areas served by public water systems that exceeded a drinking water standard or violated treatment requirements	1993-2006	County-level data	Data on violations of standards are incomplete due to monitoring and reporting limitations. Measure is a surrogate for concentrations of contaminants.
Monitoring and Reporting	E7: Percentage of children living in areas with major violations of drinking water monitoring and reporting requirements	1993-2006	County-level data	Measure shows percentage of children living in areas where no information on drinking water contaminants is available; children may or may not be at risk.

 

Food Contaminants
Topic	Description of Measure	Year(s)	Geographic Coverage	Notes
Pesticide Residues	E8: Percentage of fruits, vegetables and grains, and other food and drink products with detectable residues of organophosphate pesticides	1994-2006	National-level data	Surrogate for dietary exposure to residues of organophosphate pesticides. Other contaminants in food, such as other pesticides and industrial chemicals that are relevant to children, are not included.

 

Land Contaminants
Topic	Description of Measure	Year(s)	Geographic Coverage	Notes
Hazardous Waste Sites	E9: Percentage of children residing within one mile of a Superfund site	1990-2006	Site-specific locations	Does not reflect exposures from sites that may be hazardous but are not included on the Superfund National Priorities List. Proximity to a Superfund site does not necessarily indicate that children are exposed to contaminants.