Study of Toxins Says U.S. Children Are at High Risk

From compounds in plastics and cosmetics to pesticides banned decades ago, Americans are carrying an array of toxic chemicals in their bodies, with children bearing the brunt of the exposure, according to a report released Friday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The bodies of American children contain higher levels of about a dozen industrial chemicals and pesticides than their adult counterparts, the report shows.

Even though the effects of most of the chemicals are largely unknown, health experts say the new findings are troubling because young children, infants and fetuses are especially susceptible to the dangers posed by environmental chemicals.

Thousands of adults and children were tested for 116 chemicals in 1999 and 2000 as part of a broad national survey of American health.

For the vast majority of the chemicals, such testing had never been conducted in the U.S., and it is the first time that exposure by age, race and sex has been analyzed on a national scale. For each chemical, the blood and urine of about 2,500 people were tested.

"This report is by far the most extensive assessment ever made of the exposure in the U.S. population to environmental chemicals," said Dr. David Fleming, deputy director of the CDC.

The chemicals were measured in trace amounts, parts per billion or smaller, the equivalent of less than a drop in a human body.

Researchers suspect exposure to tiny amounts of some environmental chemicals in the womb or early childhood may permanently alter a child's intelligence, motor skills, memory, behavior, fertility and immune response.

"Kids are being exposed. We don't have all the details yet about health effects, but it can't be good for kids," said Dr. Howard Frumkin, chair of environmental and occupational health at Emory University in Atlanta and director of its pediatric environmental health center. "This report is a wake-up call that we should be looking seriously at alternatives for pest control."

The analysis reveals "a mixed picture," said James Pirkle, assistant director for science at the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health. There were "some encouraging findings and some of concern," he said.