Environmental Health Perspectives and Children's Environmental Health

VOLUME 110 | NUMBER 10 | October 2002 • Environmental Health Perspectives Children’s health issues have skyrocketed into the public consciousness in the past several years, and Environmental Heath Perspectives has played a major role in publishing articles that address these concerns. In 1995, EHP published what was probably, at that time, the most comprehensive treatise on children’s environmental health (Carlson and Sokoloff 1995). Editorials promoting the need for more research and concern for children’s health issues were published in 1996 (Olden 1996) and 1997 (Goehl 1997). The expansion of EHP’s coverage of children’s environmental health continued in 1998 when we began dedicating one full issue each year to this topic. The increasing number of submitted manuscripts in this field prompted EHP to initiate a monthly children’s environmental health research section in July 1999. In addition to the printed journal, EHP expanded its coverage of children’s environmental health on its website (http://www.ehponline.org). Last year, EHP’s website was awarded Tufts University’s Child and Family WebGuide’s five-star rating. Further enhancements of our website are planned, including an expansion to foster better communication between researcher and clinician. To further enhance EHP’s coverage of children’s environmental health, we are very happy to announce the appointment of two outstanding scientists as our co-editors for the expanded Children’s Health section of the journal: Dr. Brenda Eskenazi of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Philip J. Landrigan of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Drs. Eskenazi and Landrigan, who have been at the forefront of the children’s environmental health issues, will help formulate the future directions for EHP ’s coverage of this critical area of research. We are extremely pleased to have such outstanding scientists supporting our goals. Dr. Eskenazi is a professor of maternal and child health and epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She directs the Center of Excellence in Children’s Environmental Health Research at Berkeley, where she investigates pesticide exposure and its potential health effects in farmworker children and develops interventions to prevent exposure. Dr. Eskenazi is a neuropsychologist and epidemiologist whose longstanding research interest has been the effect of environmental exposures on male and female fertility, pregnancy, and children’s health. She has studied the health effects of numerous reproductive toxicants, including lead, environmental tobacco smoke, dioxin, and pesticides as well as other environmental agents. She is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Epidemiology and the Journal of Children’s Health and is a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Eskenazi has contributed widely to the field of children’s environmental health, including the Surgeon General’s report on smoking and women’s health, the World Health Organization’s Tobacco-Free Initiative report on environmental tobacco smoke, and the United States–Vietnam Committee on the Human Health and Environmental Exposures of Agent Orange and Dioxin in Vietnam. She also served for nearly a decade on the State of California’s Scientific Advisory Board for the Toxics Initiative (Proposition 65), which aimed to identify chemicals that were reproductive or developmental toxicants. Dr. Eskenazi currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition, and the Study Design Working Group of the National Children’s Study. Dr. Landrigan, a pediatrician, is the Ethel H. Wise Professor and chair of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. and also holds a professorship in pediatrics at Mount Sinai. He directs the Mount Sinai Center for Children’s Health and the Environment. Dr. Landrigan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and is currently editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. He has served in many other capacities, including editor of Environmental Research and committee chair at the NAS on Environmental Neurotoxicology (NAS 1992) and on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children (NAS 1993). The report of the NAS committee that Dr. Landrigan chaired on pesticides and children’s health was instrumental in securing passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the major federal pesticide law in the United States. In New York City, he served on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee to Prevent Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning and on the Childhood Immunization Advisory Committee. He is chair of the New York State Advisory Council on Lead Poisoning Prevention. From 1995 to 1997, Dr. Landrigan served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran’s Illnesses. In 1997 and 1998, Dr. Landrigan served as senior advisor on children’s health to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He was responsible at the U.S. EPA for helping to establish a new Office of Children’s Health Protection. The 1997 editorial on children’s environmental health issues ended with the statement “We intend that EHP be an active voice for children’s advocacy.” With the enthusiastic support of our readership and the generous assistance of such noted scientists as Drs. Eskenazi and Landrigan, EHP will continue to fulfill that commitment.