Did you know that a child is much more susceptible to dangerous environmental toxins than you are? The Safe and Healthy Children’s Initiative does, and it needs your help to educate families throughout the United States about why and how children are more vulnerable to environmental toxins. Take a look at some of the key messages below and try to incorporate these themes into future conversations with families in your community.
So why are children more susceptible to environmental toxins? Quite simply: their bodies, diets, and behaviors are all contributing factors.
Children’s Bodies
Children breathe more air, drink more water, and eat more food per kilogram of bodyweight than adults do. Their increased absorption rate, coupled with differing rates of burning energy, can prevent children from eliminating dangerous chemicals from their bodies. For example, if an adult absorbs 10% of ingested lead, a toddler would absorb 50%. Children also pass through critical developmental windows marked by periods of susceptibility where toxin exposure can be particularly harmful. For example, many toxins can cross the placenta, resulting in exposures during a very vulnerable period of early development.
Children also have a lengthy “shelf life,” meaning most will be alive longer than adults. Therefore, there are more opportunities for the negative effects of toxics to manifest. Exposure early in life to toxins such as pesticides can lead to undiagnosed behavioral and developmental issues.
Children’s Diet
From one to five years, children consume three to four times more food than adults. Oftentimes, children’s restricted diets may lead to greater exposure to toxins found in certain foods. Some children are picky eaters and may stick to foods that have a higher likelihood of containing toxins. For example, children may decide that they only want to eat strawberries, which typically have very high levels of pesticide residues.
Children’s Behavior
Children explore their environment to learn about the world around them. While innocent and natural, this type of behavior can contribute to an increased risk of ingesting, breathing, or absorbing toxic substances. For example, babies crawl and engage in a lot of hand-to-mouth activity. Also, children may be drawn to play outdoors during the summertime when air pollution levels are at their highest or when crop dusters are spraying the fields. This example illustrates another way the behavior of children can lead to an increased exposure to environmental toxins.
To teach families about why children are more vulnerable to environmental toxins, we encourage you to view the Safe and Healthy Children Curriculum – Clue Cards Activity and the Unique Vulnerability of Children Demonstration Activity. The activities are based on adult and popular education principles. They are a fun and interactive method of teaching farmworker families about various ways children are more susceptible to environmental toxins. The activity includes step-by-step instructions and is intended for outreach staff and health educators to implement in a short amount of time. These environmental health education resources will enable you to further explore this topic with families in your community. To access your free curriculum visit: www.outreach-partners.org/resources/shci.
This article is the first in a series of three highlighting tips from the Safe and Healthy Children Curriculum.
About the Safe and Healthy Children Initiative
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Health Outreach Partners (HOP) and the Academy for Educational Development (AED) launched the Safe and Healthy Children Initiative, a pilot project funded by The WK Kellogg Foundation to address environmental health concerns among migrant and seasonal farmworker families. The Safe and Healthy Children Initiative is enlisting the support of outreach staff, health educators, and clinicians across the country to work in partnership with local communities to help teach families simple ways to protect the health of their children.