Smarter driveway maintenance choices can protect families.

Your neighbors and nearby businesses could have an impact on your child's cancer risk, according to a series of new studies looking at common types of driveway sealant.

Kids living near blacktop treated with coal-tar sealant, a toxic compound more commonly used in the Midwest, the South, and the East, take in much higher amounts of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) than kids living in areas where that type of sealant is used less, according to researchers from Baylor University and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). About 85 million gallons of the cancer-causing, black-liquid coal-tar sealants are sprayed or painted onto parking lots, driveways, and even playgrounds each year.

Previously, scientists believed children's biggest source of PAH exposure was contaminated food, but the latest studies suggest that people are tracking the compounds into their homes, where the hydrocarbons settle into household dust and are inhaled. In fact, PAHs are being emitted into the air from these sealants at rates that may be even higher than annual U.S. tailpipe emissions, according to a new report published in the journals Chemosphere and Atmospheric Environment. "The most striking finding is that pavement sealcoat contaminates virtually every part of our everyday surroundings, including our air and our homes," says USGS Director Marcia McNutt.

The threat of contamination lingers years after an application, with one study finding lingering PAH emissions eight years after a sealing job.

Luckily, there is a far safer alternative readily available. Although there are questions as to whether sealing blacktop is even effective in preserving the life of the surface, people who want to use sealant should opt for "asphalt sealant," not a product with "coal-tar" on the product label or Materials Safety Data Sheet. Consumers can obtain MSDS sheets online or from their retailer, although some major hardware chains already refuse to sell coal-tar sealants.

To protect your family, urge local playground officials and businesses to opt for the safer version, too, or garner community support for a ban, something 15 municipalities and two counties—in New York, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin, Washington state, and Washington D.C.—have done, protecting more than 10 million residents in the process.

Blacktop surfaces create other major problems, too, including runoff and storm-water overflow in communities. Permeable pavement options, such as gravel, are much better choices for driveways because these surfaces allow rainwater to be absorbed into the ground, not run off and overwhelm municipal water-treatment facilities, threatening the health of local drinking water.