Toxin regulators are looking at the levels of potentially harmful chemicals present around schools, and are considering the notion that levels affect kids differently than they affect adults.
According to USA Today, the affects of the toxins found in everyday buildings, homes, and offices are usually measured against the defenses of a healthy adult. Those levels are used to establish what is a "safe" amount of a particular chemical.
But when measuring the levels of carcinogenic chemicals in the air outside of schools, authorities are taking the different reactions of kids and adults into consideration. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has known children to have died after being exposed to levels of one chemical, acrylonitrile, that only cause minor irritation in adults.
As a result, one school in Addyston, Ohio was closed after authorities found unsafe levels of acrylonitrile and the chemical butadiene in the air surrounding it.
These chemicals are known to pose a definite threat to human health, but when you compound the lack of knowledge about chemical reactions with humans with the myriad of other toxins even less is known about, the situation becomes extremely difficult.
"The fundamental problem is truly how little we know about interactions," one physician was quoted as saying. "There are just gaps in knowledge that are really of grave concern."
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