Pediatric Environmental Health

Abstract

Pediatric environmental health is the academic discipline that studies how environmental exposures in early life — biological, chemical, nutritional, physical, and social—influence health and development in childhood and across the lifespan. This discipline emerged in the mid-1980s after the discovery that secondhand smoke exposure was linked to increased rates of lower respiratory illness in children. Before that, most people did not realize that smoking cigarettes harmed anyone but the smoker. When the harmful effects of secondhand exposure to tobacco smoke were uncovered, researchers began asking questions about other pollutants—could it be that other biological, chemical, physical, and social agents to which children are routinely exposed also harm their health? Children have environmental exposures that are different from and often larger than those of adults. Children also have enormous susceptibilities in early development—unique “windows of vulnerability”—to toxic exposures that have no counterpart in adult life. It is well understood that timing of exposure is critically important in early human development. The tissues and organs of embryos, fetuses, infants, and children are rapidly growing and developing. Adolescence also is a period of rapid growth. These complex and delicate developmental processes are uniquely sensitive to disruption by environmental influences. Exposures sustained during windows of early vulnerability, even to extremely low levels of toxic materials, can cause lasting damage.