Pollution and Environmental Risks Kill 1.7 Million Children Each Year, WHO Says

“The new reports from the WHO underscore the important contribution of pollution to our children’s health both overseas and here in the United States”, says Anderko, the Robert and Kathleen Scanlon Chair in Values Based Health Care at Georgetown’s School of Nursing & Health Studies.

The reports found polluted environments cause the deaths of 1.7 million children every year, but that numerous deaths could be prevented by interventions already known to work, such as providing cleaner cooking fuels to prevent indoor air pollution. Air pollution is associated with a majority of the 600,000 child deaths from respiratory illnesses each year.

For example, nearly 570,000 children under age 5 died in 2012 from respiratory infections like pneumonia attributable to indoor and outdoor air pollution and second-hand smoke.

200,000 childhood deaths from malaria could be prevented with better sanitation and mosquito-control measures.

Pollution is responsible for one in four deaths among children under five years of age, a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed.

270 000 children die during their first month of life from conditions, including prematurity, which could be prevented through access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene in health facilities as well as reducing air pollution.

Not all of these deaths are exclusively the result of polluted environments. Frequent causes of death include respiratory infections from air contaminants and diarrhea from unclean water. Make sure to use clean fuel when heating or cooking in homes.

In October, the UN’s children’s agency Unicef made the first global estimate of children’s exposure to air pollution and found that nearly 90 per cent of children – 2 billion – live in places where outdoor air pollution exceeds World Health Organization limits.

Beginning in utero, children are exposed to harmful environmental risks. World Health Organization also cites electronic waste, like improperly disposed old cellphones, as major risk factors that can lead to reduced intelligence, lung damage, and even cancer in young children. Safe management of industrial waste by industries is also highlighted, along with stopping the use of hazardous pesticides and child labor in agriculture.

By helping to recover the heavy metals inside the electronic waste, children are exposed to chemicals that contribute to issues, including brain development problems, Neira said. The burden of disease from lack of access to water sanitation, hygiene falls most heavily on sub-Saharan African and south Asia.

The WHO report cites China’s dangerously high average concentrations of fine particulate matter – air pollution particles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs. “It nails down the connectionand documents what many of us have known and been saying for years – that unhealthy environments make people unhealthy”, he says.