U.S. EPA: It is Youngsters’s Well being Month

Join day by day information updates from CleanTechnica on electronic mail. Or comply with us on Google Information!

WASHINGTON — In the present day, October 1, 2024, EPA is recognizing October as Youngsters’s Well being Month. Yearly, EPA begins the autumn season by elevating consciousness in regards to the essential function our surroundings performs within the capacity for our nation’s youngsters to develop up wholesome and blissful.

“Each youngster deserves to breathe clear air, drink clear water, and dwell in wholesome, thriving neighborhoods,” stated EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan, “At EPA we’re dedicated to creating this a actuality by advancing insurance policies that cut back well being disparities, and be certain that communities have the instruments to safeguard their youngsters’s future and lifelong well being.”

Youngsters, particularly in susceptible communities, are vulnerable to the damages of air pollution and local weather change. Their growing our bodies are delicate to toxins, the place they dwell can improve their publicity to pollution and poverty can impression their restoration from environmental exposures. Early publicity to pollution can final a lifetime. Most just lately, EPA took these actions to advance youngsters’s well being safety:

• Launching the Children and Local weather Well being Zone, a set of tales and details about how local weather stressors are impacting youngsters’s well being at numerous life levels throughout completely different areas of the U.S.
• Decreasing diesel emissions and creating cleaner air for youngsters and communities by awarding almost $900 million by the EPA Clear Faculty Bus Program Awards to roughly 53 faculty districts to assist the acquisition of over 3,400 zero-emission and clear faculty buses, a part of an general $5 billion funding.
• Decreasing publicity to steer in ingesting water for numerous households by the Consuming Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF), which introduced $3 billion to assist establish and change lead service strains, a part of a $9 billion complete funding to interchange an estimated 1.7 million lead service strains nationwide and $50 million in funding to cut back lead publicity in colleges.
• Stopping publicity to “without end chemical compounds” by investing $10 billion to sort out PFAS in water, establishing the first-ever nationwide ingesting water customary for PFAS to guard over 100 million folks, and initiating cleanup efforts at Superfund websites to guard youngsters and public well being.
• Finalizing a suite of requirements to cut back air air pollution from fossil fuel-fired energy crops and funding within the transition to a clear power economic system.
• Strengthening safeguards to guard households and kids from lead in contaminated soil at residential websites; and extra.

Due to the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda historic investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation and the Inflation Discount Act are altering the world the place our youngsters dwell, be taught and play.

Be part of us in celebrating Youngsters’s Well being Month. Get entangled this October and be taught extra about youngsters’s environmental well being.

Information launch from U.S. EPA.