A/HRC/33/41 I. Introduction 1. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes examines the impacts of toxics and pollution on children’s rights, and the obligations of States and responsibilities of businesses in preventing exposure by children to such substances, in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 27/23. The Special Rapporteur has held a broad consultative process with States, international organizations, civil society, national human rights institutions and other stakeholders. He is grateful for all the responses to a questionnaire on the subject.1 II. The “silent pandemic” 2. Children everywhere are suffering from the impacts of toxics and pollution. These impacts materialize in different forms, at various stages of life, and from a myriad of routes of exposure. Children have higher levels of exposure and are also more sensitive to it, which makes them more vulnerable than adults. Such impacts can be irreversible and can even be passed down from one generation to the next.2 3. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 1,700,000 children under the age of 5 died in 2012 from modifiable environmental factors, such as air pollution (over 500,000 deaths) and water contamination.3 This figure accounts for 26 per cent of the deaths of children under 5 years of age. 4. However, the 1,700,000 deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. There is a “silent pandemic”4 of disability and disease associated with exposure to toxics and pollution during childhood, many of which do not manifest themselves for years or decades. Child victims may die prematurely after the age of 5 or be debilitated throughout their lives. Toxic chemicals that interfere with the normal expression of genes, brain development, the function of hormones and other processes necessary for children to grow into healthy adults pervade our economies and persist in our environment. 5 5. Children are born “pre-polluted”6 with numerous contaminants that impact on their rights to survival and development, to be heard, to physical integrity and to the highest attainable standard of health, to name but a few. Representative studies have measured at least dozens, 7 if not hundreds, 8 of toxic and otherwise hazardous chemicals in children 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 All submissions are available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Environment/ToxicWastes/Pages/TheRightsoftheChildandHazardousSubst ancesandWastes.aspx. Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 16 (2013) on State obligations regarding the impact of the business sector on children’s rights, para. 4 (a). WHO, Preventing Disease through Healthy Environments (2016). Philippe Grandjean and Philip J. Landrigan, “Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity”, The Lancet Neurology, vol. 13, issue 3. See, for example, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WHO, State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals 2012. National Cancer Institute (United States), “Reducing environmental cancer risk” (2010). “International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics opinion on reproductive health impacts of exposure to toxic environmental chemicals”, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, vol. 131, issue 3. Environmental Working Group, “Body burden: the pollution in newborns”. 3