Milestones: Protecting kids from toxic threats

Protecting the most vulnerable

To state the obvious, children are small.

Their minds and bodies are still growing and developing. They have a tendency to touch everything and to put a lot of what they touch in or near their mouths.

It’s no wonder that kids are more vulnerable to the toxic effects of many of the estimated 70,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States.

Since the 1970s, PIRG has advocated strong protections for children against these toxic threats to their health.

Removing toxic art supplies from classrooms

Lead in ceramic glazes. A neurological toxicant called hexane in rubber cement. Toxic solvents in permanent markers.

These were among the toxic ingredients discovered in 1984 by CALPIRG staff in art supplies purchased by California school districts for use by more than 1 million students, including elementary school children.

CALPIRG’s report earned attention in The New York Times and USA Today and added new momentum to two bills in the state Legislature. The bills would ban the purchase of the most hazardous art supplies for elementary school use and require precautionary labels on all toxic art supplies.

Working with a coalition of educators and parents, CALPIRG won passage of the two measures, which were signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian in September 1984. Four years later, responding to a campaign led by U.S. PIRG’s Pamela Gilbert, Congress adopted the federal Art and Craft Materials Labeling Act, which was modeled on the California laws.

Getting the lead out of drinking water

Many Americans were shocked and disturbed in 2015 when they learned that thousands of children in Flint, Michigan, had been exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water.

There’s no safe level of lead for anyone, but it’s especially damaging to children, affecting how they grow, think, learn and behave. And Flint, as extreme and tragic as its case has been, represents only the tip of a very deep iceberg.

In 2016, samples of drinking water from almost 2,000 U.S. communities exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s action levels of 15 parts per billion (ppb) — levels that are already roughly 15 times higher than what’s recommended by the American Pediatrics Association. As of 2021, roughly 9.2 million lead service lines remained in use all over the country.

Even though lead is particularly harmful to kids, many schools still deliver their water through lead pipes. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that more than 24 million American children are at risk of losing IQ points due to low-level lead exposure.

Our network’s own research echoes this cause for concern: In Arizona, 48 percent of the 13,380 school taps tested had lead in the water. We found similarly alarming stories in California, Illinois, and Washington state. Armed with this data, our staff have worked to organize concerned parents, teachers and community members to urge legislatures to act on lead remediation.

In California, we helped win strong new standards, adopted on Feb. 25, 2020, for lead in drinking water in the San Diego Unified School District. In Washington state, we celebrated the May 3, 2021, passage of the Bruce Speight Act — named after the former director of Environment Washington, who passed away in 2019 — to address lead in the state’s school drinking water.

Most recently, the Biden administration threw its support behind billions in funding for the removal of lead service lines as part of its proposed infrastructure plan.

About this series: PIRG and The Public Interest Network have achieved much more than we can cover on this page. You can find more milestones of our work on public health below. You can also explore an interactive timeline featuring more of our network’s public health milestones.