Children's Health and the Environment: An Overview

Abstract

Environmental pediatrics, the branch of pediatric medicine that studies the influence of the environment on children's health, has in the past decade grown exponentially. Rising rates of pediatric chronic disease and growing recognition of children's extensive exposures and great vulnerabilities to toxic hazards in the environment have catalyzed this expansion. New scientific initiatives have resulted. They include 14 Centers for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research supported by the US National Institutes of Health and the US Environmental Protection Agency; a global network of Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry; new postdoctoral training programs in pediatric environmental medicine; and the National Children's Study, the largest prospective epidemiological study of children's health ever undertaken in the United States, which launched in 2009 and will follow 100,000 children from conception to age 21 to assess environmental influences on health and development. These research initiatives have delineated the exquisite vulnerability of fetuses, infants, and children to toxic hazards in the environment. They have led to discovery of new environmental causes of disease and disability in children. This issue of The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine focuses on children's health and the environment. We have brought together thought leaders in children's environmental health to critically examine new research findings, to explore new opportunities for translating research to treatment and prevention, and to offer a vision for the future of this rapidly expanding field.

Children’s Vulnerability To Toxic Chemicals: A Challenge And Opportunity To Strengthen Health And Environmental Policy

“…Rates of many of these diseases are high and rising. 2,3 Toxic chemicals in the environment are making important contributions to these disease trends.…”

“…1 This discovery catalyzed two further insights: that early life exposures to toxic chemicals are important causes of disease and dysfunction in children and also in adults, [2][3][4] and that diseases caused by chemicals can successfully be prevented, thus saving lives, enhancing the quality of life, reducing health care and education costs, and increasing national productivity. A notable example is the nation's experience with removing lead from gasoline.…”

Nature, nurture and epigenetics

“…The legacy of certain chemical exposures, particularly EDCs, has permanently altered the present and future health of humans and wildlife (Crews and McLachlan, 2006; Diamanti-Kandarakis et al, 2009; Landrigan, 1990; Landrigan and Miodovnik, 2011). These effects are manifest by two different modes (Crews, 2008).…”

A retrospective review of cytogenetic studies on methyl isocyanate with special reference to the Bhopal gas tragedy: Is the next generation also at risk?

“…New techniques have developed since then, ranging from by early exposure. Unfortunately, the Bhopal Gas tragedy appears to be no exception, rather a harbinger of conditions yet to develop [65][66][67]. Studies by Ghosh et al [27] and Dikshit and Kanhere [18] indicate probable long term effects of MIC and hint at the inevitability of focusing on cohort-based investigations in order to understand the molecular mechanisms of chromosomal damage, their extent in the population and chances of enhanced susceptibility of DNA damage due to a genetic predisposition in the following generation, creating a high risk group which may be carrying a genetic load [68].…”