Environmental Law Institute, 2015.
Early care and education programs play an important role in helping children reach their full potential in school and throughout their lives. Six million children under five years old receive care outside of their homes – about 30 percent of all children in this age group.1 The facilities that provide this care are numerous and diverse, including approximately 300,000 licensed child care centers and child care homes across the country.2 As the number of children in licensed child care has grown, so has public recognition of the importance of the child care setting to children’s physical, emotional, and intellectual development.
This recognition has led to significant changes in standards of quality for licensed child care programs. Standards currently in place throughout the U.S. cover a wide array of elements for ensuring a healthy, safe, and enriching environment – from caregiver qualifications and program curriculum, to fire safety and nutrition. In recent years, facility standards for child care have begun to address exposure to environmental hazards as well. This shift reflects greater scientific knowledge of the potential harm to children’s health from exposure to environmental contaminants, as well as the availability of well-established facility operation and maintenance practices that can be put in place to help create healthier indoor environments.
The purpose of this report is to provide information to help states strengthen their laws, regulations, and programs to address indoor environmental contaminants in child care facilities. The report is designed for policymakers, agency officials, non-governmental organizations and associations, and others who work to promote quality child care and advance children’s health. The following chapters offer an overview of how policies currently address several key indoor environmental quality (IEQ) issues in licensed child care facilities. For each issue, the report highlights examples of policy strategies for states to consider, along with notable non-regulatory initiatives that are being implemented by state agencies.
