Preventing Harm

Parents worry, especially these days, when so much information is emerging about the links between environmental toxins and childhood illnesses. As a pediatrician, I like to emphasize the good news: Many problems are highly preventable by avoiding exposures in daily life.

Here's a case in point: A new study by my colleagues shows that people who eat fish, crabs and shellfish from the lower Hudson River and New York Harbor have higher levels of PCBs in their bodies than people from the same communities who do not consume these foods. The single most effective way to reduce children's potentially brain-damaging exposures to PCBs is to encourage families not to eat fish from contaminated waters.

The story of the Hudson River also gives all of us an incentive to push for cleaning up of waterways. Thus it illustrates the connection between the foods we consume and public policy aimed at environmental protection. Recent victories for children's health in the policy arena include banning the residential use of chlorpyrifos and diazinon, two widely applied pesticides that attack the nervous system.

For more from CCHE, visit www.childenvironment.org and www.healthy-kids. Dr. Landrigan recently co-authored 101 Ways to Raise Healthy Children in a World of Toxins (Rodale, 2001).