Children’s environmental health indicators as tools to measure progress toward sustainability

Abstract

Improving children’s environmental health is integral to achieving sustainability. Sustainability is often presented as the balance among three interdependent components—environment, economy, and social dynamics—the goal of which is to improve life for future generations. Traditionally rooted in resource conservation and management, sustainability efforts have focused on environmental and economic elements, at times neglecting human health as an important aspect of the social component. Improving quality of life for future generations requires protecting the environmental health and well-being of today’s children and women of childbearing age. During early stages of physiological development, from critical prenatal windows of development through infancy and childhood, people may be particularly sensitive to environmental hazards. Children also have higher exposure to certain factors, per unit of body mass, than adults. Consequently, environmental insults during development may increase the risks for adverse health outcomes at birth, during childhood, or later in life. Protecting children’s environmental health has overlapping environmental, economic, and social benefits. This research analyzes the intersections between children’s environmental health and sustainability and explores children’s environmental health indicators as quantitative metrics to evaluate existing sustainability initiatives in the United States.