The Getting Ahead of Lead Network
The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) , Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN), and the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) established the Getting Ahead of Lead Network (GALN) in 2022 to help child care professionals protect children in family child care from lead’s harmful effects through education and outreach. In 2023, NCHH and CEHN enrolled 15 NAFCC state affiliates who are active family child care professionals from across the country, representing diverse experiences in providing in-home care to children into the second cohort of the network. GALN members engaged with our three organizations over the course of two years; collaborative activities included train-the-trainer sessions, in-person training courses on children’s environmental health and lead exposure prevention, and professional development through lead poisoning prevention training classes. These activities have supported GALN members to provide environmental health training classes to home-based child care providers and leaders in their regions and to equip child care providers with tools they need to ensure safe and healthy early learning environments for all children.
Voices from the Field
GALN members are highly motivated NAFCC state affiliates dedicated to preventing children’s exposure to environmental health hazards. Hear from GALN members in Montana, Nevada, and Utah about the impact of this network and project. Some responses have been edited slightly for clarity.
1. Why is it important to you, as a child care provider, to know about environmental health toxicants?
Beth Hart: Knowing about how to protect and keep our children safe is an important part of caring for the children. When we have this information, we can share it with our families that we are working with so they can make the best choices for their children. Knowing what to buy or not buy helps to create safe environments for the children and creates awareness for prevention.
Sylvia Valli Abalos: The environment where children live, play, and share activities is the most important thing for health—especially if the environment is contaminated with toxicants, and there is insufficient cleanliness. From the room’s floor to an open window can influence children’s and staff’s health. Children are more exposed to toxicants and the risks of a polluted environment since they are more fragile, and their organs are not fully formed. Only ingesting small pieces of plastic or putting toys in their mouths that were in contact with pesticides or unapproved cleaning liquids can affect their health. I also want to mention that pregnant women [may inadvertently expose their babies in utero] if they are exposed to mercury, arsenic, and lead in the environment, water, soil, and some other things that contain it, such as vegetables, fish, or foods that were treated negligently. In addition, for the elderly, gases from the environment can invade the lungs, causing stroke, heart disease, respiratory problems, and even cancer. It is essential to be informed and educated to find the best way to have a toxic-free environment to achieve a better life for everyone involved in our daily work.
2. How are you currently using (or plan to use) the Lead Toolkit and/or training information to address environmental hazards in your child care environments?
Beth Hart: The lead toolkit helps me to create policies to enhance our safety and environmental awareness. The toolkit helps me to feel empowered to set environmental standards for the children and families I work with.
Sylvia Valli Abalos: A few years ago, I learned about Eco-Healthy Child Care.® It was a slow process but, at the same time, constant. Discovering situations in which they were normal a long time ago, now with studies, the danger to health is discovered, such as toys painted with lead paint or infant bottles with lead, among other things. The work is not so complicated; it is just paying little attention to what we do and our environment, such as a carpet at the entrance of the house to clean your shoes of dirt that may be contaminated or closing the windows when we notice that the air is not pure because construction is near our place. A simple radon test will protect us from radiation from cracks in the walls or floor. At the NAFCC conference, I learned about children’s toys and how to keep the environment as healthy as possible.
3. What is the most important and helpful information that you learned from being part of the GALN #2—including webinars, NAFCC’s Train-the-Trainer, and resources?
Beth Hart: The most helpful information was all of it. Teaching us to teach others brought us the vision to see beyond our own environment and how we can help and support others in our field. Helping us to expand and grow by giving us the tools to educate and teach others on the topic, and provide ongoing technical assistance elevated and built on our self-esteem.
Sylvia Valli Abalos: I can’t say what the most critical information is. Perhaps the most important is the last I learned or the one I’m trying to implement. I didn’t have much knowledge about the art materials containing asbestos, and it was also quite a discovery for me to know the symbol we have to look for to use only nontoxic art materials approved by the ACMI [Art and Creative Materials Institute] with the AP [Approved Product] seal. In addition, specks of dust and vapors from art supplies can be inhaled, damaging the developing lungs. The most recent thing I discovered is noise pollution, an increasing health problem affecting blood prowess, hearing loss, stress, headache, et cetera. My goal is to combat noise: not so many decibels!
4. What do you want other child care providers to know about identifying and reducing children’s exposure to chemicals and heavy metals?
Beth Hart: How important it is to create a safe environment, we cannot always control the world around us, but we can make the best effort to control what we can in our environments. Many of the changes to our environments can be at no cost or even a savings. Health challenges that some chemicals can cause children and adults, as well as the alternatives to use.
Sylvia Valli Abalos: Of course, I consider myself an ambassador for Eco-Healthy Child Care. Sharing information with parents and other child care providers is the goal to have a healthy environment for our children and ourselves. The TOP Star program in Utah is giving away signs to hang in front of the house that say not to smoke or vape. I will share that information with other colleagues when I can meet [them]. I talk about some of the resources of Eco-Healthy in Spanish and suggest that they please share the information on their billboards.
5. What do you want decision-makers or people who can provide funding to support lead testing and remediation to know about child care providers and lead?
Beth Hart: If you are going to test for it, you need to supply support for corrections. Many of these changes can produce a [financial] hardship for many early childhood educators, sometimes causing them to close because they cannot afford the corrections. Not all corrections need to eliminate something; they could be as simple as a reverse-osmosis water filter system.
Sylvia Valli Abalos: More free resources for testing and more classes or training to learn more about the subject. Places where providers take classes to meet, the hours required by the state license may consider these types of mandatory topics to raise awareness in the child care setting. Provide funding after training to purchase approved materials only if they meet some pre-established requirements. And, of course, free lead and radon testing for [both family and center-based] child care [facilities].
Sheryl Hutzenbiler: As an early childhood educator in a rural state, child care slots can be few and far between. Many in-home child cares are established in small towns with very few services at their disposal. Many of these in-home child cares are operated in homes built prior to 1978, when lead-based paint was used, or if improvements were made, there wasn’t proper lead remediation done because of the unknown hazards. Improve these learning and caring environments costs money, money that early childhood educators don’t have. The early childhood profession, although essential, is the lowest-paid profession. In my state, educator wages are less than $13 an hour. For the in-home educator who owns and operates out of their home, with the rising cost of required insurance, materials, play equipment, food, and utilities, and to keep child care affordable to the community, this educator is making less than $3 a day. Support for lead testing and remediation is vital for these communities to keep children, families, and the whole community healthy and safe.
Latest page update: February 21, 2025.