Children have disproportionately heavy
exposures to environmental toxicants. Pound
for pound of body weight, children drink more
water, eat more food, and breathe more air
than do adults. The health implication of these
findings is that children will have substantially
heavier exposures than adults to any toxicants
that are present in water, food, or air.
Children’s metabolic pathways, especially
in the first months after birth, are immature.
Children’s ability to metabolize, detoxify, and
excrete many toxicants is different from that of
adults. In most instances, they are less able to
deal with toxic chemicals and thus are more
vulnerable to them.
Children undergo rapid growth and
development, and their developmental
processes are easily disrupted. Many organ systems
in infants and children undergo very
rapid change prenatally as well as in the first
months and years after birth. These developing
systems are very delicate and are not well
able to repair damage that may be caused by
environmental toxicants.
Because children have more future years of
life than most adults, they have more time to
develop chronic diseases triggered by early exposures.
Many diseases are triggered by early exposures.
Those that are caused by toxicants in the
environment are now thought to arise through
stages that require years or even decades to
evolve from earliest initiation to actual manifestation
of disease. Carcinogenic and toxic exposures
sustained early in life, including prenatal
exposures, appear more likely to lead to disease
than are similar exposures encountered later.