By Aaron Ferster
Bam! I remember jumping out of my chair at the sudden, reverberating sound of something smacking the empty metal file cabinet I had left in the middle of the living room, meaning to move it into a safe, tidy corner before becoming distracted. I listened for signs of trouble as I sprinted downstairs to find my daughter preparing to strike again. She wound up and head butted the side of the cabinet, then gazed up smiling from ear to ear as she shared the thrill of making something go “thud” with her head.
That was more than ten years ago now, but I’m sure any parent can share exact moments of when their wandering toddlers showed them just how different they are at experiencing the world. Every new encounter is an opportunity to explore the world through taste, touch, and smell. And while the vast majority of those behaviors—from crawling on the ground to tasting new found items—are both normal and healthy stages of development, some can lead to trouble.
From a public health standpoint, particular childhood behaviors may increase their risk of encountering environmental contaminants and hazardous chemicals. Pound-for-pound, children also eat, drink, and breathe more than their adult counterparts, potentially compounding exposure rates to pollutants and other unwanted things that might be lurking in our food, water, and air. Additionally, because their bodies and internal systems are still developing and growing, the earliest stages of life can be the most vulnerable to long-term health impacts.
For all those reasons, EPA has always made protecting children’s environmental health a top priority. As Dr. James H. Johnson, Jr. pointed out in his blog kicking off this week’s focus on “Taking Action on Children’s Environmental Health,” Agency scientists and their partners have been working for years to better understand—and reduce—environmental risks to infants and children in all stages of development.
I invite you to learn more about that research and how it is improving the lives of children “wherever they live, learn, and play” in the special issue of our EPA Science Matters newsletter.
News, audio clips, and other examples highlighting the highly successful EPA partnership with the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, the EPA/NIEHS Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Program, are also available at http://go.usa.gov/f2eJ. That site includes feature stories of how research results are being put into action, publications compiling the first decade of findings, and information about past and upcoming program webinars.
I’m happy to report that my daughter was quickly persuaded to substitute a big wooden spoon for her head before proceeding to treat me to an afternoon of sporadic cacophony. That was an easy, and obvious action I could take to protect children’s health in my own home. Check out the sources mentioned above for some far more important and far-reaching examples. I promise to try and keep the noise down.
About the Author: EPA science writer Aaron Ferster is the father of two teenage daughters.