Greenversations

As parents, we all want what’s best for our children and like to see them grow healthy. I have taught my daughters to wash their hands, eat nutritious meals, wear protective equipment when practicing sports, and to wear sun block. Now that they are teenagers, I talk to them about the dangers of smoking, drinking and drugs, and of course…boys. However, working for the EPA has given me an increased awareness about another set of dangers—environmental exposures.

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on protecting children from environmental contaminants and learning how the differences in behavior and physiology affect their exposures. I remember as a child playing with mercury, pouring it on the floor and pushing the silver blobs around with my fingers to form a bigger blob. We didn’t know it was bad for us, and neither did our parents.

Since then, the potential health effects from exposure to mercury and other toxic chemicals such as lead, arsenic, and pesticides have become the focus of environmental policies. We have also learned that diet is an important route of exposure to pesticides and other substances in the environment.

But, why are children a concern and how are their exposures different from those of adults?

Children’s organ systems are still developing and they may be more susceptible to environmental exposures. Their behavior and habits can also put children at higher risks. We have learned that contaminants can be deposited in toys and objects that children put in their mouth. Contaminants can also find their way into the milk of lactating mothers. Another example: on average, children younger than one year old inhale approximately six times the amount of air by body weight than an adult.

I love that my job helps me learn about keeping my kids healthy. But, even if you don’t work here, EPA has developed lots of useful information to share. Our Children’s Health Protection web site is a great place to start if you are looking for generalized information. One source I’ve been involved with, the Highlights for the Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook, provides risk assessors, economists, and others a wealth of data and EPA recommendations on exposure factors needed to estimate childhood exposure to toxic contaminants.

About the author: Jacqueline Moya is a chemical engineer with EPA’s Office of Research and Development. She has been with EPA for 25 years. Her work focuses on increasing our understanding about exposure to susceptible populations.

Como padres, todos queremos lo que es mejor para nuestros hijos y nos gusta verlos crecer sanos. Le he enseñado a mis hijas a lavarse las manos, comer comidas nutritivas, usar equipo protector cuando practican deportes y a usar protector solar. Ahora que son adolescentes, les hablo sobre los peligros del fumar, beber y usar drogas y claro… de los varones. Sin embargo, trabajando para la EPA me ha dado una mayor conciencia acerca de otros peligros — exposiciones a contaminantes ambientales.

En los últimos años, ha habido un mayor énfasis en la protección de los niños contra los riesgos a la exposición a contaminantes ambientales y aprender cómo las diferencias de comportamiento y la fisiología afectan a esos riesgos. Recuerdo cuando era niña jugaba con mercurio, lo vertía sobre el suelo y con mis dedos empujaba las pequeñas bolitas plateadas hasta formar bolitas más grandes. Ni nuestros padres ni nosotros sabíamos que era malo para la salud.

Desde entonces, los posibles efectos en la salud debido a la exposición al mercurio y otros productos químicos tóxicos como el plomo, arsénico y pesticidas, han impulsado las políticas ambientales. Hemos aprendido que la dieta es una ruta importante de exposición a pesticidas y otras sustancias en el medio ambiente.

Pero, ¿por qué son los niños una preocupación y cómo se diferencian de los adultos? Los sistemas del organismo de los niños están en desarrollo y pueden ser más susceptibles a la exposición a compuestos ambientales. El comportamiento de los niños y sus hábitos también pueden ponerlos a mayores riesgo de exposición. Hemos aprendido que los contaminantes pueden ser depositados en los juguetes y objetos que los niños llevan a su boca. Los contaminantes también pueden ser encontrados en la leche de madres lactantes. Otro ejemplo: en promedio, los niños menores de uno año inhalan aproximadamente seis veces la cantidad de aire por el peso corporal que un adulto.

Me encanta que mi trabajo me ayuda a aprender acerca de mantener a mis hijos sanos. Pero si no trabaja aqui, EPA ha desarrollado mucha información útil que comparte con el público en general. Nuestra página cibernética para la Protección de la Salud de los Niños es un buen sitio para comenzar si quiere buscar información en general. Una fuente de información en la que he estado envuelta es el informe titulado Highlights for the Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook, que provee a los analistas de riesgo, economistas, y otros con información sobre factores de exposición necesarios para estimar la exposición de los niños a los contaminantes tóxicos.

Sobre el autor: Jacqueline Moya es una ingeniera química con la Oficina de Investigación y Desarrollo. Ha trabajado en EPA por 25 años. Su trabajo se concentra en aumentar nuestro entendimiento sobre la exposición en las poblaciones susceptibles.

A recent snowboarding trip one long weekend was cut short when my cell phone rang and my boss asked if I’d be willing to go to Phoenix. “There’s been a mercury spill in a high school near Phoenix,” he said. “Another one?” I asked. Just one week before, my colleague was sent to Calexico, California to help respond to a mercury spill in a school and help the on-scene coordinator and school district handle the situation. “Yep,” he said. “We got another one.”

I packed up my belongings and headed to Avondale, a Phoenix suburb. I arrived at Agua Fria High School to find emergency responders staged in the “black box” (the school’s drama room) to screen potentially contaminated belongings.

Mercury spills are an immediate health danger. At Agua Fria, a couple of boys got their hands on mercury and split it up into jars and went to their final class of the day.

Emergency responders identified exposed students and retraced their steps to find all potentially contaminated areas. Two buses and five classrooms were contaminated and cleaned up. The 1,700-student high school was closed for three days.

A “lumex” is used to screen for mercury - it looks like a first generation ghost buster (think Igor’s prototype) with a high-pitched whine that could make anyone crazy.

Imagine: you’re a high school student; you find silver liquid that looks cool and beads up like oil in water when you touch it. You bring it to class, throw some at that girl you like, play with it in the locker room, take it home to show your little sister. Now your school’s been closed, EPA officials, the local fire department and the police department are questioning you and pretty much everyone you know. How much did you have? Where did you go? What have you touched? Where are the clothes you were wearing? Do you feel sick?

Two families had to be relocated while their homes were being cleaned up and some students didn’t get some of their belongings back because they were too contaminated to clean up. Those favorite pair of sneakers? Gone. The iPod you got for your birthday? Gone. That sweatshirt you’ve had forever? Gone.

Interestingly enough, a lot of people thought it wasn’t a big deal. Some said they used to play with mercury as children and were fine. There are always arguments about how things used to be done. Sometimes these arguments start with, “In my day…” The best answer I always come up with is that we didn’t know then what we know now.

Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin, it’s poisonous.  Don’t mess with mercury.

About the Author: Margot Perez-Sullivan works in the EPA’s Public Affairs Office in San Francisco handling media relations in Arizona, Nevada and the Navajo Nation. She has also worked for the agency in the Boston and Washington DC offices.

Exposure to mercury can result from misuse or overuse of mercury-containing products.  Even something that seems as small as a broken thermometer needs to be cleaned up and disposed of properly. October is Children’s Health Month.

How do you protect children from mercury?

Each week we ask a question related to the environment. Please let us know your thoughts as comments. Feel free to respond to earlier comments or post new ideas. Previous questions.

About the author: Lina Younes has been working for EPA since 2002 and chairs EPA’s Multilingual Communications Task Force. Prior to joining EPA, she was the Washington bureau chief for two Puerto Rican newspapers and she has worked for several government agencies.

The other day I was working on some multilingual materials designed to increase awareness on the high levels of mercury in certain types of fish. My family likes to eat fish especially when we eat out. Given that fish is low in saturated fat and an excellent source of protein, I was not overly concerned. However, when I started to review the EPA-FDA fish advisories more closely, I saw the information from another perspective given our family’s eating habits.

First of all, we often go to a sushi restaurant near home. It’s one of the few restaurants we all agree upon. My three older daughters “of child-bearing age” all love to eat sushi and my youngest’s favorite dish is ikuradon, a bowl of rice topped with salmon roe. While I knew we were not regularly consuming fish in the high-mercury category—king mackerel, shark, swordfish and tilefish, the advisories do not make special reference to mercury levels in fish eggs. Exposure to mercury at high levels can harm the brain, heart, kidney, lungs, and immune systems of people of all ages. Yet, fetuses, infants, and children are at a greater risk of impaired neurological development given the fact that their internal organs and systems are developing at full swing.

Was I subjecting my daughters, especially my youngest, to an unhealthy diet? I did some Web surfing to find specific info on mercury in fish eggs. Not much luck. I decided to consult one of my EPA colleagues who helped allay my concerns. I want to share the information with my fellow bloggers. I was happy to find out that fish eggs don’t have particularly high levels of mercury. In general, fully grown fish higher in the food chain are the prime suspects when it comes to bioaccumulative contaminants. Some of these contaminants like PCBs and DDT tend to settle in the fatty areas of the fish (like the liver), but mercury is found throughout the fish. Salmon fish roe, Ikura, (イクラ) in Japanese, shouldn’t be a problem. To be on the safe side, I’ll encourage her to eat more grilled salmon which she also enjoys. In the meantime, I’ll have some more wasabi and picked ginger. Arigato.

Sobre la autor: Lina M. F. Younes ha trabajado en la EPA desde el 2002 y está a cargo del Grupo de Trabajo sobre Comunicaciones Multilingües. Como periodista, dirigió la oficina en Washington de dos periódicos puertorriqueños y ha laborado en varias agencias gubernamentales.

El otro día estaba trabajando en unos materiales multilingües diseñados para crear conciencia sobre los altos niveles de mercurio en ciertos tipos de pescado. A mi familia le gusta comer pescado especialmente cuando vamos a restaurantes. Como el pescado tiene niveles bajos de grasas saturadas y es una excelente fuente de proteína, yo no estaba tan preocupada por su consumo. Sin embargo, cuando empecé a leer los avisos de EPA y la FDA sobre el pescado, los leí con más detenimiento. Ahora veo la información desde otra perspectiva teniendo en cuenta nuestros hábitos de alimentación.

En primer lugar, solemos ir a un restaurante cercano que se especializa en la comida japonesa de sushi. Es uno de los pocos restaurantes a los cuales todos nos gusta ir. Mis tres hijas mayores de “edad fértil” todas les gusta comer sushi y a la pequeña le encanta comer el ikuradón que es un bol de arroz cubierto con los huevos de salmón. Aunque estaba algo tranquila porque sabía que no solemos comer pescados en la categoría de aquellos de altos niveles de mercurio como pez espada, tiburón, cabala del rey, lucieoperca, y el tilefish, por ejemplo, estos avisos no hacían mención especial de los altos niveles de mercurio en los huevos de pescado. La exposición al mercurio a altos niveles puede ocasionar daños al cerebro, el corazón, el hígado, los pulmones, y los sistemas inmunológicos de las personas de todas las edades. Sin embargo, los fetos, los bebés y los niños son mucho más vulnerables a los riesgos ambientales y posibles daños a sus sistemas neurológicos debido al hecho que sus órganos internos y sistemas están en pleno desarrollo.

¿Acaso estaba poniendo en riesgo a mis hijas, especialmente a la pequeña, con una dieta que no era saludable? Decidí buscar en la Internet información sobre el mercurio en los huevos de pescado sin mucha suerte. Decidí consultar a uno de mis colegas en EPA para tranquilizarme. Quisiera compartir la información con mis amigos de la blogosfera. Me alegra poder decirles que los huevos de pescado no tienen niveles elevados de mercurio. En general, los peces desarrollados y en los niveles más altos de la cadena alimenticia son aquellos donde suelen depositarse los contaminantes bioacumulativos. Algunos de estos contaminantes como los PCBs y el DDT se concentran mayormente en las áreas de mucha grasa como el hígado, pero el mercurio se encuentra a través de todo el pez. Los huevos de salmón, Ikura, (イクラ) en japonés no deben presentar problemas. Para ir a la segura, de ahora en adelante voy a alentar a mi pequeña que como más salmón que también le gusta. Mientras tanto, acompañaré la comida con un poco de wasabi y jengibre curtido. Arigato. Muchas gracias.

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.

About the author: Jason Townsend is a Ph.D. student in Conservation Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. His work is funded by an EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Graduate Research Fellowship.

Scientists have known for some time that mercury is accumulating in America’s waterways and the ocean. Emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute significant amounts of mercury to the atmosphere. Mercury-laden precipitation is especially severe in parts of the northeastern U.S. directly in the line of prevailing winds from Midwestern, coal-powered power plants.

Accumulation of this potent neuro-toxin poses a threat to wildlife and people through consumption of contaminated fish.

We do not know, however, the extent to which mercury is accumulating in non-aquatic environments—forested areas of the Northeast, for example. It is possible that mercury-laden precipitation is accumulating in leaves, soils, and leaf-litter on the forest floor. This could lead to contamination of land-bound wildlife with unknown effects on their reproduction.

Accumulation of mercury in forested areas might also contribute to waterways for many years to come because the mercury might slowly run off the land and leach into watersheds.

My study is designed to compare mercury accumulation in several forest types in New York’s Catskill Mountains. The study takes place in the heavily forested Ashokan Reservoir watershed, an area that provides drinking water to approximately nine million people in and around New York City.

I am currently collecting samples of soils, leaves, leaf litter, insects that live in the leaf litter, salamanders that eat the insects of the leaf litter, and blood samples from birds that consume both insects and salamanders. In this way I will be able to identify the amount of “biomagnification” in the forest – the extent to which any mercury that is deposited by rainfall is increasingly concentrated in organisms higher and higher up the food chain. The study takes place at multiple elevations, from the banks of the Ashokan Reservoir at 600’ elevation to the headwater streams at the top of the Catskill’s highest peaks at over 4000 feet.

This information will be critical for identifying “biological hotspots” – areas that exceed the mercury levels deemed safe for human and wildlife populations. It will also provide monitoring information to help regulators determine the magnitude of mercury emissions reductions that will be necessary in the coming decades.