Children’s Environmental Health

Chronic diseases of environmental origin are an increasing problem in the children of New York State. These include asthma; lead poisoning; obesity; cancer; birth defects; injury; mental retardation; autism and ADHD, behavioral, learning and psychiatric disorders. Environmental links have already been established for many of these chronic diseases, and research is continuing to provide new evidence each day. At least 28% of developmental disabilities in children are due at least in part to environmental causes.1 The problem of chronic diseases in the children of New York State is only more likely to worsen. Children are exposed each day to the 80,000 synthetic chemicals in our environment. Fewer than half (43%) of the chemicals that are used most widely in our state have been tested for their potential toxicity to humans and only 7% have been tested for their developmental toxicity in children.2,3

Health care providers can provide immediate help and limit children’s exposures to environmental hazards through education of parents, identification of hazardous exposures, diagnosis and treatment of children, and advocating for prevention. However, facilities where children can be seen and evaluated for environmental exposures are relatively few and widely dispersed across the nation. New York’s physicians are also not trained to suspect the environment as a cause of disease. Only a small percentage of New York State pediatricians have received specific training.

The solution is an efficient and effective approach to stem the tide of the chronic disease epidemic in New York State’s children is to establish a statewide, regionalized children’s environmental health system of four to six centers of excellence. The startup cost for the centers is less than .01% of the environmentally attributable costs. If these clinics can prevent 1% of the environmentally mediated diseases in the state, they will save $41 million, a return of nearly twenty-fold in decreased Medicaid expenditures and lost economic productivity. Specifically, the centers of excellence would increase the accuracy of diagnosis and improve the treatment of environmentally triggered diseases. The Centers would also help to prevent these diseases in the first place. Another benefit of the creation of these institutions is that they will help to better quantify and describe the burden in the state of children’s diseases of environmental origin; and expand educational programs in children’s environmental health for professionals at all levels.