This objective sounds not merely sensible but praiseworthy. Yet children are more susceptible than adults to this microbiological pollution, because they have less resistance to specific disease-causing microorganisms. These social and lifestyle risks include cigarette smoking, substance abuse, depression, drunk driving, poor diet, sexually transmitted diseases, violence, and the presence of weapons in schools. An awareness of children's unique susceptibility and exposure to toxic threats must guide every action we take to protect public health and the environment.
Credible evidence indicates that children's absorption of lead is considerably greater than adults'.
For the vast majority of industrial pollutants, however, scientific evidence does not exist for the claim that children as a group are more sensitive than any other human group. Evidential support for these claims is scarce. Children's needs for calories, nutrients, and water are greater proportionally than the needs of adults, but extrapolating toxicological risk from this fact is simplistic. Often, it is not children but the infirm and the elderly who are the most sensitive to such exposure. The methods the EPA uses currently to establish environmental health protection standards take sensitive subgroups into account.