WHO reports 4 million children die each year from environmental exposures
Washington – Exposures to harmful substances in the environment cause as much as 24 percent of global disease, according to a report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) June 16.
The consequences in children are even greater. More than 33 percent of disease in youngsters under age 5 is caused by preventable environmental exposures, at a cost of as many as 4 million lives a year.
Preventing disease through healthy environments strives to focus on the environmental causes of disease, and estimates how much death, illness and disability realistically could be avoided every year through implementation of available technologies, policies and preventive public health measures.
The report “brings together the best evidence available today on environmental links to health in 85 categories of diseases and injury,” said Dr. Maria Neira, director of WHO’s Department for Public Health and Environment. “Since the research focuses strictly on environmental hazards that are amenable to change, we can also see where preventive health measures combined with better environmental management and cleanup can have the biggest impact.”
The four main diseases influenced by poor environments are diarrhea, lower respiratory infections, various forms of unintentional injuries and malaria. A variety of measures immediately are available to address and ameliorate these problems, according to the report: safe household water storage, better hygienic measures, cleaner and safer fuels, improved use and management of toxic substances and greater adaptation of safety standards in the built environment.
The report calculates the costs of environmentally based health problems in two different ways -- those that diminish life productivity through disability, using a formula called the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY); and those that cause death.
Diseases causing the greatest DALY burden are diarrhea, largely from unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene; lower respiratory infections, attributed to indoor and outdoor pollution; and unintentional injuries caused by a wide range of industrial and workplace accidents (does not include auto accidents).
The greatest numbers of deaths are caused by cardiovascular diseases, 2.6 million annually; diarrheal diseases, 1.7 million deaths; and lower respiratory infections, 1.5 million deaths annually.
Canada, Mexico and the United States also have been researching environmental health threats, particularly to children. The three-nation Commission on Environmental Cooperation issued a report in January that represents a seminal survey of the array of factors influencing children’s health. (See related article.)
That report has been followed with a second study specifically focused on the effect of toxic chemicals on children’s health. (See related article.)
Protecting human health is also an integral part of the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency also is involved in a variety of research projects, which study the affects of pollution on the human body.
Additional information on the effects of environmental exposures on human health is available on the EPA Web site.
The full text of Preventing disease through healthy environments is available on WHO’s Web site.
