According to the GAO report, the EPA acknowledges that children face "disproportionate" risks from air pollution and other contaminants, and more than half of the nation's 74 million children in 2006 lived in counties that exceed allowable levels for at least one of the six principal air pollutants, such as ozone, which causes or aggravates asthma. The report said asthma is a leading cause of hospitalization for children and causes them to miss 14 million days of school annually and need $3.2 billion in treatment costs each year.

A president's task force, authorized in 1997, expired in 2005 and no longer provides leadership on initiatives such as the National Children's Study and the Healthy Schools Environmental Assessment Tool. During its existence, the federal task force developed strategies to address environmental "threats" to children that lead to asthma, developmental disorders, cancer and "unintentional injuries," the report said.

Despite the demise of that task force, the EPA has not been using its own advisory committee, the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, which came out of EPA's 1997 creation of the Office of Children's Health.

The report accuses the EPA of not addressing key committee recommendations last year on proposed revisions to national air-quality standards, including one recommendation that advised the EPA to eliminate environmental health disparities among low-income and minority children.

The full report may be read on the Web at www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-1155T.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com