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Children's environmental health: an under-recognised area in paediatric health care
Tania G Gavidia1, Jenny Pronczuk de Garbino, Peter D Sly
1WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on Children's Environmental Health, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA, Australia. tgavidia@ichr.uwa.edu.au
Insights
Adverse environments significantly impact child development and adult health. Healthcare providers need enhanced awareness of children's unique environmental vulnerabilities and related diseases.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Health
- Pediatric Health
- Developmental Pediatrics
Background:
- Growing recognition of adverse environmental impacts on child development from intrauterine life through adolescence.
- International focus on children's health and environmental rights, driven by global declarations on sustainable development, chemical safety, and climate change.
- Established research identifying patterns of childhood environmental diseases, assessing toxicant exposures, and pinpointing vulnerable developmental periods.
Discussion:
- The critical need to bridge the knowledge gap between environmental health research and pediatric healthcare providers.
- Highlighting the significant, yet often overlooked, burden of environmentally attributed diseases in children.
- Emphasizing children's heightened susceptibility to environmental threats compared to adults.
Key Insights:
- Environmental factors profoundly influence child growth, development, and long-term adult health.
- Children possess unique vulnerabilities to environmental toxicants during critical developmental windows.
- Quantified cost-benefits exist for addressing environmentally linked diseases in pediatric populations.
Outlook:
- Urgent need for increased awareness and education among front-line healthcare professionals regarding environmental health risks in children.
- Integrating environmental health considerations into routine pediatric care and public health strategies.
- Future research and policy should prioritize protecting children from environmental hazards to ensure lifelong well-being.
Abstract:
The knowledge that the environment in which we live, grow and play, can have negative or positive impacts on our health and development is not new. However the recognition that adverse environments can significantly and specifically affect the growth and development of a child from early intrauterine life through to adolescence, as well as impact their health later in adulthood, is relatively recent and has not fully reached health care providers involved in paediatric care.Over the past 15 years, world declarations and statements on children's rights, sustainable development, chemical safety and most recently climate change, have succeeded in cultivating a global focus on children's health and their right to a healthy environment. Many international calls for research in the area, have also been able to identify patterns of environmental diseases in children, assess children's exposures to many environmental toxicants, identify developmental periods of vulnerability, and quantify the cost benefits to public health systems and beyond, of addressing environmentally related diseases in children. Transferring this information to front-line health care providers and increasing their awareness about the global burden of disease attributed to the environment and children's special vulnerability to environmental threats is the salient aim of this commentary.
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