Protecting Our Children from Climate Change

This month, as we celebrate National Children's Health Month with Environmental Health Perspectives' (EHP) annual issue focused on children's health around the world, one particular nexus of concern has risen to the forefront: the current and potential impacts of climate change on children's health. Although climate change has become a constant topic of scientific inquiry and political discussion, scant U.S. attention has been paid to what it may hold in store for some of the most vulnerable members of our society—the youngest. Recently, though, this has begun to change: The President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children, a federal interagency group that coordinates efforts on a variety of topics important to children's health, and others such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have recognized the need to investigate and understand the risks that climate change poses to children so that we can take measures to protect children's health. In July, the Subcommittee on Climate Change of the Task Force, co-led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Homeland Security, organized an Expert Consultation on the Effects of Climate Change on Children's Health that engaged academic and government experts, children's advocates, and leaders from federal agencies and the White House. NIEHS interest in and support for this topic represents a natural convergence of our institute's investment in children's health research with our efforts to examine the implications of climate change on the health of all people, but particularly those populations likely to be most vulnerable to its effects. Children's environmental health has been a priority of our institute for decades. Early work funded and conducted by the NIEHS formed the foundation of global understanding of the health effects on children of lead, mercury, arsenic, and other toxicants. More recent work has elucidated the mechanisms and effects of endocrine disruptors, pesticides , and allergens. In 1998, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and the NIEHS established the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction, known as CERHR. The center served until 2010 as a clearinghouse for scientific information on environ mental agents that could affect human reproduction and development. In 2011, the center was subsumed into the current NTP Office of Health Assessment and Translation, which continues this important evaluation work more broadly, but with ongoing attention to children's development and health. Also in …