{"id":1356,"date":"2011-05-05T12:20:27","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T17:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/nanotechnology\/?p=1356"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:15","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:15","slug":"a-most-pressing-health-affair-acting-as-if-our-childrens-health-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2011\/05\/05\/a-most-pressing-health-affair-acting-as-if-our-childrens-health-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"A most-pressing Health Affair: Acting as if our children\u2019s health matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Richard Denison, Ph.D.<\/em><em>, is a Senior Scientist.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Health policy history of sorts was made this week:\u00a0 The prestigious journal <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.healthaffairs.org\/\">Health Affairs<\/a><\/em>, the nation\u2019s leading journal of health policy, unveiled its first-ever issue devoted entirely to environmental health.\u00a0 It did so via a <a href=\"http:\/\/healthaffairs.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/26\/health-affairs-briefing-environmental-challenges-for-health\/\">briefing held in Washington, DC on Wednesday<\/a> that featured several pre-eminent environmental health experts, including David Fukuzawa, Program Director for Health at The Kresge Foundation; Linda Birnbaum, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS); and Kenneth Olden, Professor and Founding Dean at the new City University of New York\u2019s School of Public Health and former long-time NIEHS Director.<\/p>\n<p>A sneak peak has been provided via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.healthaffairs.org\/\">advanced publication of some of the journal issue\u2019s articles<\/a>.\u00a0 Prominent among the themes of these articles:\u00a0 The high and increasing health and economic costs of unregulated exposures to unsafe and inadequately tested chemicals.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll call attention here to two papers in particular:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/content.healthaffairs.org\/content\/early\/2011\/05\/02\/hlthaff.2010.1239.abstract\">Reducing The Staggering Costs Of Environmental Disease In Children, Estimated At $76.6 Billion In 2008<\/a>, by Leonardo Trasande and Yinghua Liu.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/content.healthaffairs.org\/content\/early\/2011\/05\/02\/hlthaff.2011.0151.abstract\">Children\u2019s Vulnerability To Toxic Chemicals: A Challenge And Opportunity To Strengthen Health And Environmental Policy<\/a>, by Philip J. Landrigan and Lynn R. Goldman.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more-->The first of these papers documents the enormous \u2013 <em>and rising<\/em> \u2013 economic costs to society from lead poisoning, prenatal methylmercury exposure, childhood cancer, asthma, intellectual disability, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder linked directly to toxic chemical exposures.<\/p>\n<p>The second paper reviews the overwhelming evidence that children are far more vulnerable to the effects of chemical exposures than adults, and that \u201cchemical exposures early in life are significant and preventable causes of disease in children and adults.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both papers conclude we need dramatic changes in our nation\u2019s policies governing industrial and consumer chemicals if we are to reduce this huge health and economic burden on our society.<\/p>\n<p>Among the changes called for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a legal mandate to test the toxicity of chemicals already in commerce;<\/li>\n<li>premarket evaluation and testing of new chemicals; and<\/li>\n<li>epidemiologic monitoring and focused health studies of exposed populations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If these sound familiar, they should:\u00a0 All of them are prominent features of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.saferchemicals.org\/about\/want.html\">platform of the <em>Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families <\/em>coalition<\/a>.\u00a0 And even more encouraging, they are all <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/nanotechnology\/2011\/04\/14\/tsca-reform-2-0-aka-safe-chemicals-act-of-2011-tastes-great-less-filling\/\">core elements of the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011<\/a>, introduced last month by Senator Frank Lautenberg and four colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Advancing this legislation would go far to demonstrating our nation\u2019s willingness to act as if our children\u2019s health matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Health policy history of sorts was made this week:\u00a0 The prestigious journal Health Affairs, the nation\u2019s leading journal of health policy, unveiled its first-ever issue devoted entirely to environmental health.\u00a0 It did so via a briefing held in Washington, DC on Wednesday that featured several pre-eminent environmental health &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[8008,5013,39153,39158,39157,39199,39175,39595,5020],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","tag-asthma","tag-children-safety","tag-data-requirements","tag-lead","tag-methylmercury","tag-national-institutes-of-environmental-health-sciences-niehs","tag-prenatal","tag-safe-chemicals-acts","tag-safer-chemicals-healthy-families"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12632,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/12632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}