In the United States, about six million children under the age of five receive some kind of child care outside of their homes¹, and children can spend as much as 35 hours a week in child care facilities². These child care environments are an important setting in a child’s life, and can impact healthy childhood development. There is the potential for children to be exposed to environmental health hazards in child care environments, such as lead, toxic substances in consumer products, pesticides, and/or flame retardants. It is especially important that regulations and policies for child care facilities recognize, and are designed to reduce, environmental health hazard exposures for young children. Children’s bodies and behaviors are very different from adults – they are growing and developing at a rapid rate, and this makes children more vulnerable than adults to hazardous environmental exposures. A detrimental exposure during childhood can lead to chronic or long term health problems.
Protections from environmental health hazards, through both required regulations and voluntary policies and practices, can greatly improve a child’s environment and subsequent health outcomes. Currently, child care licensing regulations cover some areas of environmental health, such as restrictions on smoking when children are around, or standards for proper ventilation. In 2015, the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN), and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), released a report titled: Reducing Environmental Exposures in Child Care Facilities: A Review of State Policy. This report examines state policies across the U.S. that address environmental health in licensed child care facilities, focusing on several key indoor environmental exposures, including: environmental tobacco smoke, radon, carbon monoxide, mold, ventilation, pesticides, lead-based paint, and asbestos. The report notes that while there are certain states and programs that are making great strides to implement protective environmental health measures in child care settings, there is still a lot of room for improvement.