Environmental Contaminants

See the Topic Background for an introduction to environmental contaminants and their potential effects on children's health. Key findings are presented below.

	Percentage of children living in counties in which air quality standards were exceeded (Measure E1)
	Percentage of children's days with good, moderate, or unhealthy air quality (Measure E2)
	Long-term trends in annual average concentrations of criteria pollutants (Measure E3a)
	Number of children living in counties with high annual averages of PM-10 (Measure E3b)
	Percentage of children living in counties where estimated hazardous air pollutant concentrations were greater than health benchmarks in 1996 (Measure E4)
	Percentage of homes with children under 7 where someone smokes regularly (Measure E5)
	Percentage of children living in areas served by public water systems that exceeded a drinking water standard or violated treatment requirements (Measure E6)
	Percentage of children living in areas with major violations of drinking water monitoring and reporting requirements (Measure E7)
	Percentage of fruits, vegetables, and grains with detectable residues of organophosphate pesticides (Measure E8)
	Percentage of children residing within one mile of a Superfund site (Measure E9)

Outdoor Air Pollutants

• In 1990, approximately 23 percent of children lived in counties in which the one-hour ozone standard was exceeded on at least one day per year. In 2001, approximately 15 percent of children lived in such counties. This value fluctuated during the intervening years, ranging from 13 to 28 percent. See Measure E1.
• In 1996-2001, significantly more children lived in counties that exceeded the eight-hour ozone standard than in counties that exceeded the one-hour standard. In 2001, nearly 40 percent of children lived in counties that exceeded the eight-hour standard. See Measure E1.
• In 2000, approximately 27 percent of children lived in counties that exceeded the PM-2.5 particulate matter standard. In 2001, approximately 25 percent of children lived in such counties. See Measure E1.
• The percentage of days that were designated as having “unhealthy” air quality (including days that were unhealthy for everyone as well as those that were unhealthy for sensitive groups) decreased between 1990 and 1999, dropping from 3 percent in 1990 to less than 1 percent in 1999. The percentage of days with “moderate” air quality remained around 20 percent between 1990 and 1999, although an upward trend is suggested by the fact that the percentage of moderate air quality days was higher in 1999 than for any other year in this analysis. See Measure E2.
• In 1990, on average, children were exposed to 31.9 micrograms per cubic meter of PM-10, which represents 64 percent of the standard for the year. By 1995, the concentration had fallen to 54 percent of the standard, and it has remained at about that level since. See Measure E3a.
• In 2000, about 1 million children experienced an average PM-10 concentration above the annual standard, down from about 2 million in 1990. See Measure E3b.
• In 1996, all children lived in counties in which the combined estimated concentrations of hazardous air pollutants exceeded the 1-in-100,000 cancer risk benchmark. Approximately 95 percent of children lived in counties in which at least one hazardous air pollutant exceeded the benchmark for health effects other than cancer. See Measure E4.

Indoor Air Pollutants

• The percentage of homes with children under 7 in which someone smokes on a regular basis decreased from 29 percent in 1994 to 19 percent in 1999. See Measure E5.

Drinking Water Contaminants

• The percentage of children served by public water systems that reported exceeding a Maximum Contaminant Level or violated a treatment standard decreased from 20 percent in 1993 to 8 percent in 1999. Every category of violation decreased between 1993 and 1999 except for nitrates and nitrites, which remained steady. See Measure E6.
• In 1993, approximately 22 percent of children lived in an area served by a public water system that had at least one major monitoring and reporting violation. This figure decreased to about 10 percent in 1999. The largest number of monitoring and reporting violations occurred for the lead and copper standards. See Measure E7.

Pesticide Residues

• From 1994 to 2001, the percentage of food samples with detectable organophosphate pesticide residues ranged between 19 percent and 29 percent. The highest detection rates were observed during 1996 and 1997, while the lowest detection rate was observed in 2001. See Measure E8.

Land Contaminants

• As of September 2000, about 0.8 percent of children lived within one mile of a Superfund site listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) that had not yet been cleaned up or controlled, down from about 1.3 percent in 1990. As of September 2000, about 1.3 percent of children lived within one mile of any Superfund site listed on the Superfund NPL. See Measure E9.

Environmental Contaminants: Topic Background

Tracking environmental contaminants is an important step toward determining whether environmental policies protect children. This section of the report 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.

This second edition of America’s Children and the Environment includes several new measures that reflect pollutants in environmental media.

The report adds a new measure that describes trends in long-term concentrations of pollutants in the air. This measure builds on the report’s first two measures for air pollution, which reflect daily exposures to air pollutants. Research suggests that exposure to a few days of high concentrations of air pollutants or to many days of lower concentrations both can have adverse effects on health. The report also includes a new measure concerning pesticide residues in foods.

Describing the significance of pollutants in soils is a difficult problem because contamination often is localized and difficult to capture in a national report. To improve coverage of contaminants in soil, this report replaces an earlier measure that showed the percentages of children living in counties with a Superfund site with a new measure showing the percentage of children who live within a mile of a Superfund site.

This report does not assess quantitative relationships between the measures for environmental contaminants and childhood illnesses. The report 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

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