ENVI Committee Report
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6. VULNERABILITY OF CHILDREN
6.1 Most of the public health and environmental protection organizations received by the Committee, in particular the Canadian Institute of Child Health, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada, the World Wildlife Fund, the Canadian Environmental Law Association and the Ontario College of Family Physicians denounced the Canadian pesticide management system because it does not specifically address the vulnerability of children, and emphasized the importance of correcting this deficiency. In the view of the Canadian Institute of Child Health, "most regulations and policies are designed to protect adults and refer to the healthy 70-kilogram male, and not the 7-kilogram child."78 Officials from the Pest Management Regulatory Agency dispute this statement indicating that this is not the case at present. To demonstrate the urgent need to pay specific attention to children, witnesses from public health and environmental protection organizations explained how children, from conception to adolescence, are more vulnerable to pesticides than adults. See Chapter 8 for a description of the way in which risks are assessed by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency.
Why Children are Particularly Vulnerable
6.2 Children are vulnerable in part because they run a greater risk of exposure to pesticides due to the specific characteristics of their development and physiology. For example, they eat more food, drink more water and breathe more air per kilogram of body weight than adults and can thus absorb larger quantities of the pollutants present in the environment.
6.3 In addition, their diets are appreciably different from those of adults (consisting largely of fruits, vegetables and mother's milk), and the younger they are, the more limited their ability to metabolize and eliminate residual toxic substances.79 As mentioned by Sandra Schwartz of the Canadian Institute of Child Health:
| From conception to adolescence, children are more sensitive and more exposed to pesticides than the average adult. On average, children receive greater exposures to pesticides because kilogram for kilogram they eat more food, drink more water, and breathe more air than adults, and their diets are somewhat different from those of adults, particularly at a young age.80 |
6.4 Children have different habits (for instance, more exploratory behaviour, more frequent outdoor activities) which expose them to pollutants to a greater degree than adults. Table 6.1, prepared by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, provides a list of sources of exposure to which children are specifically subject. For example, residues of domestic pesticides used to control ants and rodents can accumulate in at-home play areas, public parks and school playgrounds. Flea collars worn by pets, and pesticides stored in cupboards are just a few of the many sources of exposure at home that could be eliminated by parents if they were informed of the risks associated with pesticides. There are also many other sources of exposure, such as public play structures made out of wood that has been treated with a preservative, swimming pool chemicals, and the pesticides used on turf in playgrounds. Chapter 12, entitled "Awareness, Reduction and Phase Out," discusses in greater depth the need to inform the Canadian public and proposes recommendations related to this goal.
Table 6.1: Sources of Exposure Relevant to Children
| 1. The Home (in the child's home & homes of playmates) | Applications of pesticides
Storage and handling of pesticides
Pesticide life cycle and pathways
|
| 2. Public Places (schools, daycare, etc.) |
|
| 3. Via Air & Water |
|
| 4. Via Food |
|
Source: Canadian Environmental Law Association, Draft -- Regulating Pesticides to Protect Children's Health, 94 p., December 1, 1999.
Vulnerability of the Fetus and the Infant
6.5 Research suggests that exposure to chemical pollutants acting as hormone disruptors can affect the development of the fetus and the child. Witnesses underline that from the moment of conception, the fetus comes into contact with pollutants from the mother's body that pass through the placenta.81 Pesticides can be absorbed by a fetus through the placenta, the skin and the lungs. The respiratory movements made by the fetus cause the substances in the amniotic fluid to reach the air tubes, especially if the fetus is under stress.82 Ms. Sandra Schwartz of the Canadian Institute of Child Health stated:
| Pesticides can be transferred from a mother's body to a developing fetus or embryo. For example, ...concentrations of Lindane and DDE have been found in amniotic fluid.83 |
A newborn's nutrient intake is enormous: during the early years, caloric requirements per unit of weight are five times higher than for an adult.84 These requirements can be met exclusively by breast milk, but this important food may expose the newborn to contaminants. According to Dr. Nicole Bruinsma of the Canadian Public Health Association, women accumulate contaminants in their bodies and excrete them in breast milk thus subsequently passing them on to the newborn. The most dangerous contaminants for the child are those which affect brain development because of the brain's rapid growth at this stage.
| Breast milk now is the most contaminated food that humans can eat, because it presents a food that is at the very top of the food chain. It's more concentrated than anything we're exposed to because it's already been concentrated one more time in our bodies. And that's the first food we're putting into the mouths of our infants when they're coming out of the womb, at the moment of birth, at a moment when their vulnerabilities are maximal.85 |
6.6 The Committee is deeply concerned that organochlorines and other insecticides can disrupt the endocrine system and have repercussions on fetal development (an indirect effect), and that contaminants can affect children directly at very early stages of development by damaging the nervous system, by affecting behaviour and by interfering with the immune system and the reproductive organs. The various stages in the development of the embryo, the fetus and the child are controlled by specific chemical messengers that are programmed to emerge at a particular site in the body and be accepted at another, at a precise concentration and at a specific time. If another chemical interferes with these messengers, it may cause irreversible damage at any one of these stages. The result may be seen in development and in the functioning of the reproductive system which may unleash a myriad of problems.
6.7 Studies conducted in the United States in the area of children's health have highlighted the fact that the main illnesses currently affecting children are chronic in nature. The mortality rate from asthma and the rate of hypospadias (a birth defect in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis rather than on the tip) have doubled, cases of leukemia and brain cancer have increased, and neurological developmental problems have spread.86 It is also suspected that other long-term problems result from exposure to pesticides, such as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and reproductive organ tumours.87 During the hearings, attention was given to a possible link between the parents' place of work (families living in agricultural areas, for instance) and an increased rate of childhood cancer and birth defects.88 Dr. Colborn of the World Wildlife Fund, and Ms. McElgunn, of the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada, also put forward the hypothesis that pesticides might have negative effects on behaviour, due to the effects on neurological development:
| [...] a study was done in Mexico recently by Dr. Elizabeth Gillette, who looked at children between the ages of four and five. One group was exposed to many pesticides because of farm and home use, and the others who lived in the foothills had virtually no pesticide exposure at all. There were very significant differences between the two groups in both mental and motor abilities. The children from the farm areas were scoring at a much lower level. They had an increase in aggressive behaviour as compared to the matched pesticide-free children living in the foothills. Their play was more likely to be very solitary, and it did not show much play-pretend and that type of thing.89 |
Research into Child Vulnerability
6.8 The testimony and the scientific literature have led Committee members to the conclusion that children are the most vulnerable group affected by pesticides. However, there appear to be no research programs focusing on this specific group in Canada. For example, there is no child or fetus pollution indicator system which would make it possible to gather data on concentrations of pollutants found in children's bodies. The testimony of Dr. Martin also suggests that little research has been done in this field:
| With regard to neurological effects ... we see kids all the time who after using it either as an insect repellent or for head lice will have seizures and prolonged confusion. That happens all the time. We think that's just an acute effect ... Over the long term what does that do? If you can have that effect from putting insect repellent on your infant's head, what happens to your neurological system after 15 years of exposure? We need to be studying it, and we need to be funding the studying of it.90 |
6.9 Children, for many reasons, make up the group that is the most vulnerable to pesticides, because of their developmental and physiological characteristics, their daily activities which are different from those of adults and the fact that the fetus and the newborn are exposed to pollutants accumulated in the mother's body. Current research programs in Canada do not take these specificities into account and the information available to the general public is inadequate.
6.10 The Committee urges the federal government to develop an area of research specifically for children. Research protocols should focus on the effects of pesticides on children specifically. Additional funding will be necessary to achieve this objective.
| The Committee recommends that the government immediately develop and ensure adequate funding for a pesticides research program devoted specifically to child health. Research goals should focus on the exposure of the fetus and the newborn to pollutants accumulated in the mother's body, on the neurotoxic effects of pesticides and on such aspects as children's daily activities and their developmental and physiological characteristics. |
78 Canadian Institute of Child Health, Brief to the Committee.
79 Anonymous, "How safe is your produce, Consumer Reports," March 1999.
80 Evidence, Meeting No. 4, November 16, 1999.
81 S. Schwartz and G.W. Chance, "Children First," Alternatives Journal, 25(3):20-25, Summer 1999.
82 G.W. Chance and E. Harmsen, "Children Are Different: Environmental Contaminants and Child Health," Canadian Public Health Review, Volume 89, Supplement 1, May/June 1998, p. 10-14.
83 Evidence, Meeting No. 4, November 16, 1999.
84 G.W. Chance and E. Harmsen, "Children Are Different: Environmental Contaminants and Child Health," Canadian Public Health Review, Volume 89, Supplement 1, May/June 1998, p. 10-14.
85 Evidence, Meeting No. 4, November 16, 1999.
86 P.J. Landrigan, et al., "Children's Health and the Environment : a New Agenda for Prevention Research," Environmental Health Perspectives 106, Supplement No. 3, 1998.
87 G.W. Chance and E. Harmsen, "Children Are Different: Environmental Contaminants and Child Health," Canadian Public Health Review, Volume 89, Supplement 1, May/June 1998, p. 10-14.
88 Sierra Club of Canada, November 17, 1999, V.F.Garry et al, "Pesticide Appliers, Biocides, and Birth Defects in Rural Minnesota," Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 104, No. 4, April 1996, p. 394-399.
89 Evidence, Meeting No. 4, November 16, 1999.
90 Evidence, Meeting No. 11, December 1, 1999.