Children’s Health Environmental

Thanks to the Children s Health Environmental Coalition www.checnet. org). 

If you aren t set up to wash cloth diapers at home, conventional disposable diapers aren t a good option. One widely quoted study (published in Archives of Environmental Health and conducted by Anderson Laboratories back in 1999) found mice exposed to VOC chemicals emitted by conventional disposables had asthmalike reactions. They also contain chlorine and have high-tech chemical gel cores that activate when your baby pees to lock in moisture. The Children s Health Environmental Coalition says this absorbent material—sodium polyacrylate— could cause respiratory and skin irritations in occupational settings (where exposure is higher than with diaper use). We wonder how safe can that much chemical activity that close to a baby s genitals be twenty-four hours a day ... 

The Children s Health Environmental Coalition (www.checnet.org) estimates a baby goes through an average of 8,000 diapers from birth to toilet training. For more information on the 8,000 your infant will go through ... 

CHEC s HealtheHouse The Resource for Environmental Health Risks Affecting Your Children. Los Angeles, CA Children s Health Environmental Coalition, http //www.checnet.org/ ehouse (accessed on March 13, 2006). 

The factors are discussed which lead to the formation of environmental regulations in the United States, following the growing realisation over the last 150 years of the environmental impact of the new chemicals which were being developed. Initiatives for new regulations often come from the public, and their concerns at the time, particularly in relation to pollution prevention, air quality, and the protection of children s health. Current environmental regulations are discussed along with their impact on industrial research and development. Future trends are forecast to be related to air quality, children s health, and pollution prevention. 11 refs. 

UBA (2001). Substituting Environmentally Relevant Flame Retardants Assessment Fundamentals. ISSN 0722-186X, March 2001. Cited in Growing Threats Toxic Flame Retardants Children s Health. Environment California Research and Policy Center, 2003. See UBA s press release at http // www.umweltbundesamt.de/uba-info-presse-e/presse-informationen-e/ p5601 -e.htm... 

Factors that should be considered when formulating measures to protect children from environmental health threats have been examined. Children are particularly susceptible to chemical injury before birth, as well as in their early months and years of life, when their consumption of food and drink, relative to body weight, greatly exceeds that of adults. Moreover, children s metabolic pathways are immature and are less able to detoxify potentially harmful environmental chemicals than adults. Several chemicals that are deleterious to children s health have been identified by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and an EPA report has proposed a national agenda to protect children from environmental health threats (Wiant, 1997). 

Nina Holland is an associate adjunct professor of genetics and toxicology and director of the biorepository at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Her scientific interests include molecular epidemiology of children s health, cytogenetics, and reproductive toxicology. In Dr. Holland s Laboratory of Children s Environmental Health, research focuses on the development and implementation of genetic and immuno-... 

There is a pressing need to develop and validate sensitive, specific, and cost-effective biomarkers of exposure, susceptibility, and effect that can be applied to human studies so that the gaps in our understanding of the role of environmental stressors on children s health can be closed. 

Table 8. Examples of global clinical assessment tools, by organ system, amenable for epidemiological investigation of environmental influences on children s health...

Table 9 presents a comparison of basic epidemiological study designs for assessing child health outcomes by their inherent methodological strengths and limitations. While experimental study designs are included for completeness, none is appropriate for the evaluation of environmental influences on children s health when the exposure(s) cannot be randomized within acceptable research practices. 

Ultimately, the risk characterization results in a statement of the potential susceptibility of children for specific effects from specific exposures to environmental agents. This statement forms the basis, together with other considerations, on which regulatory or management decisions will be made. Often, the risk manager is not a specialist in children s health thus, it is imperative that the risk characterization be clear, definitive, and unencumbered by scientific terminology that may be misunderstood or misinterpreted. The risk assessor must effectively communicate what is known, what is not known, and what is questionable, in order for the risk assessment to be appropriately factored into the overall risk management process. 

Research on the impact of environmental factors on children s health has most often focused on an exposure to specific chemicals or particular organ systems or end-points. Additional emphasis should be placed on prospective longitudinal studies capturing multiple exposures over various life stages. 

DiFranza JR, Aligne A, Weitzman M (2004) Prenatal and postnatal environmental tobacco smoke exposure and children s health. Paediatrics, 113 1007-1015. 

Suk WA, Ruchirawat KM, Balakrishnan K, Berger M, Carpenter D, Damstra T, de Garbino JP, Koh D, Landrigan PJ, Makalinao I, Sly PD, Xu Y, Zheng BS (2003) Environmental threats to children s health in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Environ Health Perspect, 111(10) 1340-1347. 

Tamburlini G, von Ehrenstein OS, Bertollini R eds (2002) Children s health and environment A review of the evidence. A joint report from the European Environment Agency and the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Copenhagen, European Environment Agency (Environmental Issue Report No. 29). 

International Institute of Concern for Public Health (1998) Environmental influences on the health of children. In International Conference on Children s Health and the Environment, Amsterdam, July 1998. 

Landrigan PJ, Kimmel CA, Correa A, and Eskenazi B (2004) Children s health and the environment Public health issues and challenges for risk assessment. Environmental Health Perspectives 112 257-265. 

Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Toxic chemicals and children s health in North America, CEC Project Report, 2006, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 

Grigg, J. (2004). Environmental toxins their impact on children s health. Archiv. Disease in Childhood. 89 244—250. 

Salam, M, T., Li, Y, F., Langholx, B., and Gilliland, F, D. (2004). Early-life environmental risk factors for asthma Findings from the Children s Health Study. Environ. Health Perspect. 112,760-765. 

Cranor, C.F. (2008) Do You Want to Bet Your Children s Health on Post-market Harm Principles An Argument for a Trespass or Permission Model for Regulating Toxicants , Villanova Environmental Law Journal 19(2) 215-314. 

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