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Protecting Children from Pesticides
January, 2002
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Kids need Protection
Children are at a greater risk for some pesticides
for a number of reasons. Children's internal organs are still developing
and maturing and their enzymatic, metabolic, and immune systems
may provide less natural protection than those of an adult. There
are "critical periods" in human development when exposure
to a toxin can permanently alter the way an individual's biological
system operates. Children may be exposed more to certain pesticides
because often they eat different foods than adults.
For instance, children typically consume larger
quantities of milk, applesauce, and orange juice per pound of body
weight than do adults. Children's behaviors, such as playing on
the floor or on the lawn where pesticides are commonly applied,
or putting objects in their mouths, increase their chances of exposure
to pesticides.
Adverse effects of pesticide exposure range
from mild symptoms of dizziness and nausea to serious, long-term
neurological, developmental and reproductive disorders. Americans
use more than a billion pounds of pesticides each year to combat
pests on farm crops, in homes, places of business, schools, parks,
hospitals, and other public places.
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- The 1996, Food Quality Protection
Act, set tougher standards to protect infants and children from pesticide
risks. EPA is enforcing these tougher standards, which include an additional
safety factor to account for developmental risks and incomplete data
when considering a pesticide’s effect on infants and children,
and any special sensitivity and exposure to pesticide chemicals that
infants and children may have.
- EPA has taken action when the
Agency has identified risks to children. For example in August 1999,
EPA announced cancellation of major "kid’s food" uses
of the organophosphate (OP) pesticide methyl parathion and significant
restrictions on the use of another OP, azinphos methyl. Scientific data
indicate that these uses do not provide the extra measure of protection
FQPA demands for children.
- EPA is reassessing all OP residue
limits. In addition to the OP’s, the Agency has targeted several
other high-risk pesticides for priority review including atrazine, aldicarb
and carbofuran, among others.
- For the first time, EPA is requiring
hundreds of additional studies on pesticides to better understand their
effects on children specifically (developmental neurotoxicity, acute
and subchronic neurotoxicity). In addition, EPA has developed new tests
and risk assessment methods to target the factors unique to infants
and children.
- EPA has registered many new, safer
pesticides in recent years that constitute lower-risk alternatives to
more toxic pesticides such as the organophosphates.
- EPA distributed a consumer information
brochure to grocery stores nationwide and launched an interactive web
site to give consumers vital information about pesticides in food: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/food.
- EPA is undertaking a screening
and testing program to address concerns expressed by scientists in recent
years that chemicals might be disrupting the endocrine
system -- the glands and the hormones they produce that guide the
development, growth, reproduction, and behavior of human beings and
animals. Disruption of the endocrine system may result in reproductive
disorders, birth defects, immune suppression, and other harmful effects.
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