Protecting children’s health – Addressing chemical exposures

“Up to 90% of disease risks are linked to our environment – and these environmental risk factors are largely preventable but they remain largely unmeasured and underregulated” said Martine Vrijheid, ATHLETE research project coordinator and head of ISGlobal’s Environment and Health over the Lifecourse programme, at a science briefing at the European Parliament on 13 May 2025.

RECETOX: Protecting children’s health – Addressing chemical exposures.

Co-hosted by MEP Christophe Clergeau with support from the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), ATHLETE scientists from across Europe came to Brussels to brief policymakers on how they can protect children’s health from chemical exposures. Featuring the latest scientific findings from the ATHLETE project, the event focused on how EU policymakers can take action to address chemical pollution.

Environmental risks to child health

ATHLETE looks at the health effects of numerous environmental hazards and their mixtures, starting from the earliest stages of life. The EU-funded research project looks at the exposome – all physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial factors that have an impact on health.

A recent ATHLETE study highlighted that mixtures of chemicals, such as PFAS, are associated with increased metabolic syndrome risk in children. Metabolic syndrome increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Children need better protection from chemical pollution mixtures as environmental hazards pose a bigger risk during development, according to Martine, “Children from lower economic backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to the chemical soup,” she says.

Certain environmental factors are more likely to cause disease in children, according to Remy Slama, Senior investigator at Inserm. The work of his team and and ANSES shows that persistent organic pollutants, temperature, and PFAS chemicals are all linked to a large number of adverse health outcomes in children.

Regulating chemicals to protect child health

Reducing levels of harmful chemicals can quickly and significantly improve children’s health, according to Claire Philippat, researcher at Inserm. Focusing on chemicals that are known endocrine disruptors, like bisphenols, parabens and phthalates, her team did an intervention study asking women to remove or replace their personal care products containing these substances. Preliminary results show that such changes significantly reduced chemicals levels in urine highlighting that removing these chemicals from consumer products can make a real difference.

Regulating these chemicals is not a simple task, according to Remy, highlighting the need for regulations to target a wide range of potentially harmful chemicals at the same time, following the logic of hazard classes. He also recommends moving away from compound-by-compound and often sector-specific regulations, tackling groups of chemicals simultaneously across multiple sectors.

“If REACH [chemicals regulation] was to be revised, it should be done making sure that once a substance is identified as being of very high concern, everything is done to remove that substance from the market to reduce people’s exposure,” he says.

Regulating according to the exposome

There is more than enough evidence to act, according to Génon Jensen, Executive Director of HEAL, says: “The consequences of these chemical exposures can last a lifetime.”

A health-focused REACH revision, stopping the use of PFAS, and group restrictions on chemicals within the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability all provide opportunities to better protect children’s health, according to Genon, along with including a zero-pollution provision in the European Union’s Multiannual financial framework. “How can we be competitive if we don’t have a healthy population?” she says.

The exposome approach is powerful for understanding our health, says Martine, but we’re lagging investment in environmental health. “European policymakers need to invest in an ambitious European human exposome initiative, which includes building a 10 million strong pan-European exposome cohort,” she explains.

MEP Christophe Clergeau S&D is ready to meet this challenge: “As an MEP committed to environment and health, I would like to put the exposome at the top of the agenda at European level.”

This text was taken from the official website of the ATHLETE project.