Protecting Children’s Health Now Makes for Kids with Strong Bodies and Minds

Children are disproportionately impacted by environmental exposures in major ways:

• Kids eat, breathe, and drink more relative to their body mass than adults do, increasing their exposures to environmental threats.
• From pre-term to adolescence children’s organs and natural body defenses aren’t fully developed. Environmental exposures can disrupt developmental processes during these key windows and cause lifelong health complications.
• Children have unique behaviors such as playing close to the ground and putting their hands in their mouths. Proximity to dust and chemicals that accumulate on the ground and the greater likelihood of ingestion of toxins due to hand and mouth behavior put children at greater risk.

Because children can’t control their environments, it is important that those of us who have a role in caring for and raising children are aware of their unique susceptibility to environmental threats.

Event Spotlight

EPA Children’s Health Month Webinar: Environmentally Healthy & Resilient Learning Spaces

Wednesday Oct 9^th, 2pm ET

Join EPA for a discussion about children’s environmental health in schools.

Learn about how children’s health and the school environment affect attendance and academic performance; how a changing climate impacts school facilities and the children and staff in them; and what schools can do to ensure safe, healthy, and resilient learning spaces.