Talking Points

The Safe Health Standards for Children Act seeks to set new standards that better protect children, recognizing that:

• Children are more vulnerable to toxins in our air and drinking water.
• Children can’t handle “adult doses” of toxins. When we give a child an aspirin, we would think twice before ever giving him / her the “adult dose.” Yet, when most air and water regulations were created, they gave children “adult doses” by setting all standards on the cancer and acute health risks to that of a 160-pound adult.
• Children drink more water and breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults – toxins in the air and drinking water hit children’s organs harder than adult’s.
• Because their brain, immune, and reproductive systems are still developing, exposure to even low levels of toxins can wreak havoc on a developing child – and more so to a developing fetus. These are “critical periods” in human development and a time when exposure to a toxin can permanently alter the way a child’s biological system operates.

Children have more exposure to toxins in the air.

• Children are outdoors more hours per day than adults. While outdoors, they breathe in more air because they exert themselves and “huff and puff” to a greater degree than adults; and, they participate in more outdoor organized activities than adults.
• Infants and children have a higher ventilation rate than adults relative to their body weight and lung surface area, resulting in a greater dose of pollution delivered to their lungs.

Pollution hits kids harder than adults.

• Air pollution is more likely to exacerbate asthma and be a trigger for asthma attacks in infants and children.

Pregnant women are at risk.

• Recent research points to a link between neural tube defects and miscarriages in pregnant women and toxins in drinking water.
• A study done in Brazil found that miscarriage late in pregnancy increased nearly 20 percent in areas with the highest air pollution.

We have an obligation to protect children and pregnant women from harm.

• Without new standards, we are failing to protect our children from higher risks of childhood cancers, neurological and developmental problems, and asthma and upper respiratory illnesses. Without new standards, we are failing to protect pregnant women from neural tube defects and miscarriages.