ACE Frequent Questions
- What is America's Children and the Environment (ACE)?
- What are the purposes of ACE?
- What are children's environmental health indicators?
- Why did EPA focus on indicators for children?
What is America's Children and the Environment (ACE)?
America's Children and the Environment (ACE) is EPA's report on data related to children's environmental health. ACE brings together information from a variety of sources to provide national indicators, which are easy-to-understand summaries of data from national surveys and studies. The indicators are grouped into the following areas:
- Environments and Contaminants (conditions in the environment, such as levels of air pollution)
- Biomonitoring (contaminants measured in the bodies of children and women of child-bearing age, such as children's blood lead levels)
- Health (rates at which certain illnesses or conditions occur among U.S. children, such as the annual percentage of children with asthma)
Each indicator is accompanied by background text that describes how the issue is relevant to children's environmental health, along with a description of the data used in preparing the indicator. Wherever possible, the indicators are based on data sources that are updated in a consistent way, so that indicator values may be compared over time.
This website presents indicators included in the third edition of ACE (referred to as ACE3), which was originally published in 2013; previous editions of ACE were published in 2000 and 2003.
What are the purposes of ACE?
ACE has three main objectives:
- First, it brings together data from a variety of sources to show trends and other information on important factors relevant to the environment and children's health in the United States.
- Second, it can inform discussions among policymakers and the public about how to improve data on children's health and the environment.
- Third, it includes indicators that can be used by policymakers and the public to track trends in children's environmental health, and ultimately to help identify and evaluate ways to minimize environmental impacts on children.
EPA believes information on trends in children's environmental health is valuable and should be shared with the public. The purpose of ACE is to compile, and make available to a broad audience, information that can help identify areas that deserve more attention, potential issues of concern, and persistent problems. Some of the indicators can also be used to help evaluate whether past environmental policies and actions have been effective. EPA hopes that these indicators will motivate more research and data collection, and, when appropriate, action to address problems.
The information in ACE should not be used as the only basis for planning or policy making. EPA and other federal agencies use information from many different sources when planning their activities on children's environmental health. ACE presents findings from many studies, but ACE isn’t meant to be an authoritative summary, nor does it represent a conclusion about the weight of scientific evidence.
What are children's environmental health indicators?
ACE defines an indicator as “a quantitative depiction of an aspect of children’s environmental health that summarizes the underlying data in a relevant, understandable, and technically appropriate manner.” Simply put, the indicators in ACE present numerical data from surveys and studies in an easy-to-understand format. The data may represent environmental conditions, chemicals in the bodies of children and women of child-bearing age, or the frequency of certain childhood diseases and conditions. Federal data on children’s environmental health issues come from several different agencies and are often very detailed and complex. ACE brings this information together into one report and summarizes the data in graphics that convey the key information. The ACE indicators focus on presenting data at the national scale in order to meet its three main objectives, described above.
ACE3 uses the terms “children’s environmental health” to refer to the external physical, chemical, and biological factors that affect—or could affect—children's health. The evidence of relationships between environmental exposures and children’s health continues to evolve for many of the indicators presented in this report. Just because an indicator is included in ACE3 does not necessarily mean there is a known relationship between the environmental exposure and an effect on children’s health. EPA aims to develop increasingly informative indicators of children’s environmental health as more data become available to reduce these uncertainties.
Why did EPA focus on indicators for children?
Environmental contaminants can affect children quite differently than adults, both because children may be more highly exposed to contaminants and because they are often more vulnerable to the toxic effects of contaminants.
Children generally eat more food, drink more water, and breathe more air relative to their size than adults do. That means they may be exposed to relatively higher amounts of environmental contaminants. Children's normal activities, such as putting their hands in their mouths or playing on the ground, can result in exposures to chemicals that adults do not face. In addition, some environmental contaminants may affect children more than adults because their bodies are not fully developed and their growing organs can be more easily harmed.