Children are more likely than adults to suffer health impacts due to environmental impacts.
Children are more likely than adults to suffer health impacts due to environmental impacts. Kari Nadeau of Stanford’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research discusses related risks, as well as what caregivers and health care workers can do about them.
Horror stories of children trapped in hot cars make headlines, but air pollution and impacts from a changing climate are more constant threats. Children are at higher risk for health changes due to these impacts for a range of reasons, including the way their bodies metabolize toxins, need more air on a per pound basis, and regulate temperature differently than adults. More than 90% of children under 15 regularly breathe air so polluted it puts their health and development at serious risk, while vector-borne diseases and water scarcity – scourges exacerbated by global warming – affect more than one in four children and more than one in three, respectively.
Kari Nadeau, director of Stanford’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research, studies air pollution’s effects on the heart, lungs, and immune system. Her work has confirmed that early exposure to dirty air alters genes in a way that could lead to serious ailments in adulthood, changes the immune system over time, and affects learning, among other findings. Nadeau and Frederica Perera of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health co-authored a review paper June 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine that outlines pollution and climate change threats to children’s health and calls for better understanding and intervention from health professionals.
Read more at: Stanford University
