A Systematic Review of the Effects of Environmental Pollutants, Chemical Factors, and Climate Changes on Children’s Height

Abstract

Objective: Height is a multifactorial characteristic affected by genetics, hormonal and environmental factors. The aim of this study was to systematically review the effects of environmental pollutants, chemical factors, and climate changes on children and adolescents’ height. Methods: This study searched scientific databases including PubMed, ISI Web of Science, and Scopus using key words such as “Environmental Pollution”, “Climate Change”, “Growth”, “Body Height”, “Child and adolescent development”, and their combination. By removing duplicates, relevant papers were selected in three phases. This review included studies that were conducted among children and adolescents up to the age of 18. After the quality assessment, data was extracted by a reviewer and rechecked by another one. The authors summarized information of 52 articles about the possible effects of environmental factors and climate change on height. Articles were divided to four categories, including air, soil, water pollutants, and climate changes. Results: The evidence indicates that exposure to environmental pollutants have different effects on height growth; some of them, such as air pollution with lead, arsenic, fossil fuels and smoking, as well as exposure to nuclear radiation among children is associated with shorter stature, while exposure to some soil pollutants and airport noise did not have any effect on children’s height growth. Conclusions: The current study proposes that exposure to some environmental pollutants and chemicals during childhood and puberty might have negative effects on height growth. Therefore, various interventions are necessary for reducing the production of these pollutants and the exposure of growing children to these environmental factors.