Children & Environmental Toxins

Children's exposure to environmental toxins often goes unnoticed. Toxins sneak into a child's body through the placenta during fetal development, or via ingestion of house dust, soil, breast milk and food during early childhood. Biologic markers (biomarkers) enable scientists to directly measure the levels of toxins in human tissues and fluids, linking exposures to disability or disease more effectively.

Despite increased knowledge about chemical toxicity, testing for developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) and reproductive harm is rarely conducted. DNT testing in animals provides data on potential functional and structural damage to the fetal nervous system from maternal toxin exposure during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Paradoxically, DNT testing is seldom requested for a chemical unless there is prior evidence of its neurotoxicity. 

Despite numerous attempts to upgrade the regulatory system, such as the CBTS, the framework to protect children from environmental toxins is precarious. Under current regulations, manufacturers of commercial chemicals (excluding pesticides) are not required to supply any toxicity data before selling their products. Nor are pesticide manufacturers obligated to supply basic premarket toxicity and exposure data necessary to ensure that children will be protected from exposure and potential harm from use of those pesticides.

Indeed, the vast majority of chemicals have not been tested for DNT. The most basic toxicity tests in animals are lacking for 75% of the 3,000 highest production volume chemicals—chemicals for which annual production exceeds 1 million pounds per year [49,75,76,77]. The US EPA has entered into an agreement with the American Chemistry Council, the chemical manufacturer's trade association, to provide basic toxicity screening tests for the high-production-volume chemicals by 2005 (http://www.epa.gov/chemrtk/volchall.htm), but this was voluntary.

Reference: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020061