Environmental Health: EPA Efforts to Address Children's Health Issues Need Greater Focus, Direction, and Top-Level Commitment
Highlights
According to EPA, children face disproportionate risks from contaminants such as air pollution and lead paint. The health consequences to the country's 74 million children are significant. In 2006, 55 percent of children lived in counties exceeding allowable levels for at least one of the six principal air pollutants such as ozone which causes or aggravates asthma. Asthma is the third-most common cause of childhood hospitalization, resulting in $3.2 billion in treatment costs and 14 million lost school days annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1997, EPA created the Office of Children's Health and convened the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (Advisory Committee) to provide advice and recommendations to assist in developing regulations, guidance, and policies to address children's health. In April 1997, the President signed Executive Order 13045, creating an interagency Task Force to recommend federal strategies for protecting children. Our testimony is based on ongoing work on the extent to which EPA has used the Advisory Committee and addressed the committee's key recommendations. It also includes information about the Task Force. We met with numerous EPA officials and analyzed the committee's letters. GAO recommends, among other things, that EPA expeditiously complete its review of the Advisory Committee's key recommendations.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Protection Agency | 1. The Administrator of EPA should examine ways to more proactively use the committee to reinvigorate its focus on protecting children's environmental health. |
Starting in September 2009, the EPA Administrator sought the advisory committee's input on regulations, programs, plans and other issues. In 2010, many of these efforts were implemented, including a request for assistance in developing school siting guidelines, air issues and in September 2010, the advisory committee presented areas of mutual interest to the EPA Science Advisory Board.
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| Office of Children's Health Protection | 2. To honor the Administration's commitment to the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, the Office of Children's Health Protection should expeditiously complete the cross-agency process to review the committee's key recommendations. |
EPA has taken actions to address its advisory committee's recommendations, despite the elimination of the cross agency process. For example, to demonstrate EPA's vision on children's health, the EPA Administrator issued a memo in February 2010 demonstrating the agency's commitment to ensuring that children's health proteciton is the driving force in all agency decisions including regulation, implementation of community based programs, research, and outreach. In addition, to address a key advisory committee recommendation to help eliminate health disparities among children EPA has taken actions includilng the development of a cross agency strategy for environmental justice and children's health. Further, EPA has taken actions to ensure healthy environments where children live, learn and play by awarding cooprerative agreements for place based approaches to promote children's environmental health in underserved communities and released its School Siting Guidelines in 2011 among other efforts.
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