History of Children's Environmental Health Protection at EPA
EPA Establishes Children's Environmental Health Agenda
In 1995, EPA released its Policy on Evaluating Risk to Children which directs the agency to explicitly and consistently take into account environmental health risks to infants and children in all risk characterizations and public health standards set for the United States. In the fall of the 1996, the Agency established a seven-step National Agenda to Protect Children's Health from Environmental Threats (pdf) .
This National Agenda called for the Agency to:
- Ensure that all standards set by EPA are protective of any heightened risks faced by children.
- Develop a scientific research strategy focused on the gaps in knowledge regarding child-specific susceptibility and exposure to environmental pollutants.
- Develop new, comprehensive policies to address cumulative and simultaneous exposures faced by children.
- Expand community right-to-know allowing families to make informed choices concerning environmental exposures to their children.
- Encourage parental responsibility for protecting their children from environmental health threats by providing them with basic information.
- Encourage and expand educational efforts with health care providers and environmental professionals so they can identify, prevent, and reduce environmental health threats to children.
- Provide the necessary funding to address children's environmental health as a top priority among relative health risks.
Over the years EPA has reaffirmed and updated this important policy several times. Most recently, in October 2021, EPA updated our Children's Health Policy.
See EPA's most recent and historical children's health policies.
President Acts on Behalf of Children
On April 21, 1997, the president signed the Executive Order on the Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks (PDF). This Executive Order requires all federal agencies to assign a high priority to addressing health and safety risks to children, coordinate research priorities on children's health, and ensure that their standards take into account special risks to children. The Executive Order created the President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children to implement the Executive Order.
International Attention to Children's Environmental Health
Later that same year, the environment leaders of the Group of Eight met in Miami, Florida and agreed to the Declaration on Children's Environmental Health, affirming a commitment to continuously work for a safe and secure environment for children and highlighting seven areas for action, including climate change, risk assessment, air and water quality, and endocrine disrupting chemicals.
EPA Launches New Office
In May 1997, EPA established the Office of Children's Health Protection (OCHP) to support the Agency as it implements the president's Executive Order as well as the national Agenda to Protect Children's Health from Environmental Threats. The mission of OCHP is to make the environmental health protection of children a fundamental goal of public health and environmental protection in the United States and around the world. OCHP supports and facilitates Agency efforts to protect children's health from environmental threats.
In 2022, EPA celebrated 25 years of protecting children's environmental health. Get a first hand look at how the OCHP has progressed over the last 25 years and where the office is looking to grow:
Where We've Been:
Where We are Going:
EPA Takes Action
EPA has taken steps to fulfill the requirements of the National Agenda and Executive Order. Some of the more visible examples include certain updated air quality standards which will provide additional health protection for 35 million children, implementation of the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments, and the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act Amendments of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.