Charles W. Schmidt

Abstract

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President Clinton issued an executive order on 21 April 1997 outlining several mandates concerning the increasingly popular area of children's environmental health. The mandates range from the creation of a multiagency federal strategy to protect children from environmental threats to increased research on how multiple chemical exposures and cumulative risks affect children.

The administration has been influenced largely by a 1993 National Research Council report, which stated that children have not been adequately protected by current pesticide tolerances. The report suggested that certain basic differences between children and adults were not being adequately assessed in the standard-setting process. Furthermore, the incidence of many childhood diseases that are known or suspected to be related to environmental exposures appears to be rising.

The EPA's newly established Office of Children's Health Protection (OCHP) has primary responsibility for implementing the executive order. The first order of business is to bridge clinical work and research in several areas related to children's environmental health, such as respiratory illness. The Department of Health and Human Services plans to help by committing significant resources toward the problem of the 5 million asthmatic children in the United States.

Perhaps the most sensitive issue of the children's environmental health initiatives is the revision of environmental standards. The OCHP will be involved in the identification and revision of a sample five environmental standards that are thought to be insufficiently protective of children. The methods by which these standards are revised would provide a model for the revision of additional standards in the future.

Criticism of the initiatives abounds, with many questioning both their necessity and their propriety. The children's health initiatives could spell out profound changes in the way environmental policies are set. But the revision of environmental standards is so politically volatile that the degree to which the changes are actually implemented remains to be seen.