EPA Releases Annual Children's Environmental Health Report
Coinciding with Children's Health Month, this October, EPA has recently released a new publication titled "Children's Environmental Health: 2007 Highlights." The publication is the seventh in an annual series that highlights EPA work to protect children from environmental risks.
This year makes the tenth year of explicit attention to the health of children following the Executive Order of 1997, Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks. Since then, EPA says, the agency has funded research on how the environment affects children's health, promoted the education of health care providers, assembled data to quantify the extent of the issues, and more.
Two programs in particular demonstrate these efforts:
- The Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSUs) are an ongoing partnership with EPA for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the Association of Occupation and Environmental Clinics to provide exceptional advice to the health care community and parents on particular environmental agents of concern. In ten years, the PEHSUs have trained 100,000 health professionals about children's environmental health. This has been replicated in many other countries.
- The Children's Research Centers are a partnership with the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences to advance the understanding of how the environment affects children's health. The agencies have funded 21 centers over ten years and have provided valuable information about the effects of pesticide exposures, air pollution and asthma, chemicals in water, genetic and environmental interactions, and early indicators of environmentally-related diseases. Policy makers and health professionals have used this information to improve children's health.
To read the report and learn more about Children's Health Month, visit http://yosemite.epa.gov/ochp/ochpweb.nsf/content/chm07.htm.