In the last few years, the plight of our nation's children has been a growing concern both within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and across other Federal agencies. In the fall of 1995, the Administrator directed EPA to consider environmental health risks of infants and children in all risk assessments, risk characterizations, and public health standards set by EPA for the United States. A year later, in October 1996, the Administrator announced EPA's National Agenda to Protect Children's Health from Environmental Threats. The Agenda focuses on several areas: standards protecting children; research strategy; community right-to-know; and educational efforts for parents, teachers, healthcare providers, and environmental professionals. The Agenda was followed by the 1997 Executive Order (E.O.) 13045, Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks. E.O. 13045 states that each Federal agency: (a) shall make it a high priority to identify and assess environmental health and safety risks that may disproportionately affect children; and (b) shall ensure that its policies, programs, activities, and standards address disproportionate risks to children that result from environmental health risks or safety risks. It requires, for each covered regulatory action, (a) an evaluation of the environmental health or safety effects of the planned regulation on children; and (b) an explanation of why the planned regulation is preferable to other potentially effective and reasonably feasible alternatives considered by the agency.

"October 2003." Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction. -- Purpose. -- The need to value children's health benefits.-- Organization of the handbook.-- Fundamental differences between adult and child health benefits valuation. -- Risk differences. -- Valuation differences. -- Summary and implications for benefit transfer. -- Benefit transfer. -- Benefit transfer technique and children's health valuation. -- Describe the policy case. -- Assess the suitability of existing studies. -- Transfer the estimates. -- Evaluate qualitatively and characterize uncertainty. -- Summary. -- Applications of benefit transfer to mortality risks. -- Valuation methods. -- Standard economic valuation techniques. -- An alternative approach to WTP: cost of illness. -- Other important types of analyses. -- Cost-effectiveness analysis. -- Breakeven analysis. -- Bounding analysis. -- Risk-risk and health-health analysis. -- Summary. -- Risk assessment and economic analysis. -- Communication between risk assessors and economists. -- Communication between risk assessors and economists. -- Key components of the risk assessment data. -- Summary of External reviewer comments.