Review and Evaluation of EPA Standards Regarding Children's Health Protection from Environmental Risks

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

[FRL-5903-1]

Review and Evaluation of EPA Standards Regarding Children's

Health Protection from Environmental Risks

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Notice; request for comments.

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SUMMARY: As part of its ongoing commitment to protect children from

environmental health risks, EPA will select five existing human health

and environmental protection standards for review and evaluation to

determine if they sufficiently protect children's health. EPA is

seeking recommendations and comment concerning standards it should

select for review, including detailed explanations and reference to any

studies that support that recommendations, EPA does not intend to

review recently promulgated standards as part of this effort. The

standards EPA ultimately will select for review and evaluation will be

those that could potentially have a major impact on children's health

as a result of reevaluation and vision. These standards would generally

be those where children's health was not considered in the original

development of the standard; or, where children's health was considered

but new data suggest the standard does not adequately protect children;

and where, if changes were made in the standard, children's health

protection would be strengthened.

DATES: Comments must be in writing and received by December 2, 1997.

ADDRESSES: Written comments should be submitted to Paula R. Goode,

Office of Children's Health Protection, USEPA (MS 1102), 401 M Street,

SW, Washington, DC 20460, [email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Paula R. Goode, (202) 260-7778.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Children in America today inhabit a world

that is very different from that of two generations past. The

traditional infectious diseases have largely been eradicated. Infant

mortality is greatly reduced. The expected life span of a baby born now

in the United States is more than two decades longer than that of a

child born at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, children

today face hazards in the environment that were neither known nor

suspected only a few decades ago. At least 75,000 new synthetic

chemical compounds have been developed and introduced into commerce;

fewer than half of these compounds have been tested for their potential

toxicity to humans, and fewer still have been assessed for their

specific toxicity to children.

Children's exposures to lead, pesticides, PCBs, and toxic air

pollutants are widespread. Compared to adults, children are

particularly vulnerable and at increased risk from many environmental

threats in four ways (1) Children's organ systems are still

developing--including rapid changes in growth and development immature

body organs and tissues, and weaker immune systems--which makes them

more susceptible to environmental hazards; (2) pound-for-pound,

children breathe more air, drink more water and eat more food than

adults; (3) children's exposures to toxins are further enhanced by

their play close to the ground and their normal hand-to-mouth activity;

and (4) children have more future years of life than adults and are

more susceptible to chronic, multi-stage diseases such as cancer or

neurodegenerative disease that may be triggered by early exposures.

Environmental health hazards that threaten children range from air

pollution that triggers asthma attacks and lead-based paint in older

housing, to treatment-resistant microbes in drinking water and

persistent industrial chemicals that may cause cancer to induce

reproductive or developmental changes.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner set forth a National Agenda to

Protect Children's Health From Environmental Threats in EPA's

publication, Environmental Health Treats to Children, September, 1996,

to ensure that children receive the protection they need and deserve,

and help fulfill our nation's obligation to protect future generations.

This agenda includes a commitment to ``ensure that all standards EPA

sets are protective of the potentially heightened risks faced by

children, and that the most significant existing standards be

reevaluated.''

As stated in the Summary section of this notice, EPA will select

and then review and evaluate five human health and environmental

protection standards that establish discrete regulatory levels. The

standards most suitable for this effort are those that if revised as a

result of the review and evaluation, would strengthen and increase

children's environmental health protection. The term ``standard'' for

purposes of this notice means national standards established by EPA

that identify discrete regulatory levels related to human health and

environmental protection. Examples of such standards include pesticide

tolerances that establish allowable levels of pesticide residues in

food under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, Maximum

Contaminant Levels that establish allowable levels of contaminants in

drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act; and, health-based

regulations that establish acceptable levels for air pollutants under

the Clean Air Act. EPA will consider comments and recommendations on

such standards in all the environmental media (air, water, soil, etc.).

The term ``standard'' as used in this Notice does not include standards

establishing analytical methods, technology-based standards, or site

specific actions (such as facility

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permits under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, or

Records of Decision for cleanup of Superfund sites).

In selecting the five standards for review and reevaluation EPA

will consider a variety of factors including any new information since

the standards were originally promulgated, as follows:

New scientific information or new data regarding adverse

health effects on children;

New understanding of routes of exposure to children;

Whether the regulated substance/pollutant is persistent

and bioaccumulative;

New methodologies of evaluating human health risks;

New epidemiology studies;

New toxicity studies; and

New environmental monitoring studies.

As part of this effort, EPA will convene a balanced, broad-based

external Advisory Committee, chartered under the Federal Advisory

Committee Act, Public Law 92-463, to give advice to the Administrator

on various issues of children's environmental health protection. Notice

of the establishment of this Children's Health Protection Advisory

Committee (CHPAC) was published on September 9, 1997 (62 FR 47494).

CHPAC will consider recommendations received by EPA as a result of this

notice and other information. Comments and other information received

as a result on this notice will be placed in a docket that will be

established for CHPAC. EPA will ask the Committee to recommend five

standards that EPA should reevaluate with respect to children's health

protection. CHPAC meetings will be announced in the Federal Register

and open to the public. The Administrator will consider the Committee's

recommendations and the recommendations and comments received in

response to this Notice. EPA intends to announce the five selected

standards in a Federal Register notice in early Summer of 1998.

This EPA effort will help fulfill President Clinton's Executive

Order 13045, Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and

Safety Risks, signed on April 21, 1997. This Order, in part, directs

each Federal agency to set as a high priority the identification and

assessment of environmental health risks and safety risks that may

disproportionately affect children; and ensure that its policies,

programs, activities, and standards address disproportionate risks to

children that result from environmental health risks or safety risks.

Dated: September 26, 1997.

E. Ramona Trovato,

Director, Office of Children's Health Protection.

[FR Doc. 97-26320 Filed 10-2-97; 8:45 am]

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