 Children hold a special place in our families, our communities and in our societies. Children's bodies undergo rapid development, which increases their vulnerability to many environmental risks. Compared to adults, they take in more food, air and water per kilogram of body weight, which can increase their risk, relative to an adult, of adverse impacts of contaminants that may be present. Because children spend their time in different "microenvironments" than adults--on or near the floor, for example, or playing in the soil--they have different exposure patterns than an adult living in the same home or neighborhood. All of these factors underscore the fact that "children are not little adults."
In the past, environmental regulations, tolerance levels for contaminants in food, and other public health protection measures were primarily designed based on information about the average adult male with the assumption that this would also be protective of children. Gradually this situation is changing as scientists learn more about children's particular vulnerabilities to environmental contaminants and as governments and other responsible actors shift their approaches to start taking the specific characteristics of children into account. (...) |
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