Inches

UPDATE no 25 August 2002 INCHES

2002 - The International Network on Children's Health, Environment and Safety

Dear member of INCHES,

In this update :
News items
Conferences
INCHES funding

News items

EU project PINCHE
The by INCHES initiated Thematic Network on Policy Interpretation on children’s environmental health has been approved by the EU. It is now waiting for the signing of the contract in the coming months. The EU is going to fund this proposal for the coming three years. It would be necessary to receive input of all our members at certain stages of this project. There will be a separate listserver for this project. We will keep you informed.

INCHES website
Any items related to children’s are welcome. Someone who wants to do something or knows someone who can do some voluntary work for the website can reply to the secretariat.

WSSD summit in Johannesburg
Who of you will be present at the Sustainable Development summit in Johannesburg at the end of this month? Please make it known to us so we might arrange a meeting of INCHES members in South Africa. The WHO is organising a parallel session at the summit in Johannesburg. A joint group of INCHES, ISDE and PSR are collaborating to prepare together with EPA an event on children’s environmental health. Peter van den Hazel and Lilian Corra will be among the speakers at this event.

INCHES conference in 2003
As mentioned before Paul Saoke is organising the next International Conference in 2003. He announced the first call for abstracts will be mailed soon. The date for the conference has been fixed for 18-21 November 2003, in Nairobi, Kenya. Please mark your agendas. Co-participation of the organisation of the conference by WHO has been received. Support by UNEP is expected. If you know of any international development agency that is willing to provide some seed money to start with organising this meeting, your suggestions would be most welcome. Please contact Paul Saoke at: psaoke3@yahoo.co.uk

WHO book on children’s environmental health
ISDE Italy is going to translate “Children’s health and environment: A Review of evidence” (European Environment Agency – OMS) which you can find on www.euro.who.int/eprise/main/WHO/Progs/Che/NewsEvents/20020108_1
If you are interested in translating it in other languages (Russian, Spanish, German, etc), following the suggestion of the Colleagues from WHO in Rome, I invite you to communicate it to dr. Romizi.
Roberto Romizi, International Society of Doctors for the Environment – ISDE Scientific Office Via della Fioraia 17/19 – 52100 Arezzo Italy; Tel. +39-0575-22256 fax +39-0575-28676 email: isde@ats.it

Summit Johannesburg and lead
Alliance To End Childhood Lead Poisoning is participating at the summit in Johannesburg at several meetings. For those interested on these can contact the Alliance for more information.
International Networking and Advocacy: The Global Lead Network (NGO Forum Event) on Saturday, August 24, 2002;
Global Lead Network Meeting on Sunday, August 25, 2002
Cleaner Fuels / Transport for Sustainable Development (Official UN Side Event) on Thursday, August 29, 2002
Lead in the Urban Environment (Official Parallel Event) on Saturday, August 31, 2002
Contact: Alliance To End Childhood Lead Poisoning ; 227 Massachusetts Avenue, NE, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20002 USA; +01-202-543-1147; +01-202-543-4466 (fax)
jrochow@aeclp.org; www.globalleadnet.org

Lead
Lead danger begins in the womb
Women exposed to high levels of lead in childhood may be unknowingly passing the toxic substance along to their unborn babies. Prenatal lead exposure leaves children more vulnerable to long-term developmental delays, according to a study published in the July issue of Pediatrics. A number of studies have investigated the long-term effects of lead exposure in utero, with mixed results. Most studies relied on blood samples from the mother or umbilical cord blood from the baby with sampling methods that may not accurately measure the cumulative effects of lead exposure.
In their recent study of 197 mothers and their infants in Mexico City, researchers added another measure of fetal lead exposure. In addition to sampling the newborn's umbilical cord blood, they measured the mother's bone lead concentration with a special X-ray a month after delivery. "The theory is that bone lead measures in the mother tell you a lot about the prenatal exposure of the child," says Joel Schwartz, associate professor of environmental epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Most pregnant women don't take in enough calcium to develop the fetal skeleton, so calcium gets sucked out of the mother's bones. When you're mobilizing calcium out of bone, lead also comes out of the bone." The researchers tested the children's cognitive development at age 2, and found that for each doubling of umbilical cord blood lead concentrations, the children's scores dropped more than three points. High levels of lead in the mother's knee bone were associated with an additional six- to seven-point drop in scores. Most of the stored lead in a woman's body comes from childhood exposure to leaded gasoline, says Schwartz. But he is quick to point out that women in the study were exposed to higher levels of lead, on average, than American
women, because Mexico was much slower to phase out leaded gasoline.

What you can do
Unless you grew up near a lead smelting plant or battery plant, or in a community with a lot of lead paint, you probably don't need to be concerned about your baby's risk of lead exposure.
But to be on the safe side, get plenty of calcium throughout your pregnancy. Your baby needs calcium to build strong bones and teeth, and extra calcium will also protect your bones against osteoporosis. The best sources are milk (especially skim) and other dairy products, fortified foods, and canned fish (such as sardines). Your prenatal vitamin should contain at least 150 mg of calcium, but your doctor may recommend a
calcium supplement if you need a little extra.

WHO Europe
The Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health will take place in Budapest, from 23-25 June 2004: it is organized by the WHO Regional Office for Europe in collaboration with Hungary, the host country, and the
European Environment and Health Committee (EEHC) which serves as the Steering Committee. The theme of the Budapest Conference is "The Future for our Children". The process to date is outlined in the enclosed Background
Note. As requested by the European countries at a special intergovernmental meeting of ministries of health and ministries of environment in April 2002, and further supported by the EEHC at its 6th session in June 2002, a major
policy outcome is expected to be a Children's Health and Environment Action Plan for Europe.
An initial draft proposal for the Action Plan (enclosed below, EEHC6.12) was prepared by Dr Ondine von Ehrenstein for the June session of the EEHC which discussed overall considerations rather than focusing at this stage at the specific technical issues. It was decided that a draft Action Plan should be developed for discussion/negotiation with Member States at an intergovernmental meeting of ministries of health and ministries of
environment in early 2003.
It is vital that the Action Plan be developed in consultation at an early stage with input from experts and organizations active in children's health and environment. INCHES has been asked to give input to this process. Those of you that have time and ideas and are experts in relevant areas, are invited to get in touch with peter van den Hazel for your input to the initial proposal. We can react to some questions that Who has on such an action plan. Your response preferably before August 27 by e-mail (pvdhazel@inter.nl.net).

Conferences

Upcoming Conferences 1
Healthy Children Conference will take place on October 10-11, 2002 in Chernivtsy (Ukraine) at the Bucovinian Medical Academy Conference Center. (See Update no. 24)
Conference secretariat: Department of Developmental Pediatrics Bukovinian State Medical Academy; Post Box # 601 58010, vul. Grushevskogo, 1, Chernivtsi-10, Ukraine
E-mail - chernivtsi2002@yandex.ru, pediatr2@msa.cv.ua
www.chernivtsi2002.narod.ru

Upcoming Conferences 2
ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICIANS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT OF TURKEY organizes
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF CHILDREN’S HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT
October 18th – 20th, 2002, Istanbul, Turkey. See Update no. 24.
Website: www.cevrehekim.org.tr ; Contact: Dr. Günay Can: 90-212- 586 15 49 alpincan@yahoo.fr ; Dr. Ümit Sahin: 90-212- 244 56 68 umitsa@turk.net

The 1st Annual Conference of AIRNET
The EU AIRNET project forms an European-wide framework for air pollution and health research to strengthen the science-policy interface and to integrate information from individual research projects. Specific objectives are to collect, discuss, interpret and disseminate results and policy-relevant impacts of research supported by the 4th and 5th EU Framework Programme (FP) as well as of nationally funded studies. This will be achieved by linking findings from exposure assessment, epidemiology and toxicology to risk and health impact assessment, and subsequently to policy issues (standard setting, abatement strategy, source control). AIRNET is organized through the activities of working groups, annual conferences, and information sharing by website and discussion forum, and develops its work in close collaboration with the EU DG XII Research.

The first of three Annual Conferences of AIRNET will bring together key investigators of EU and nationally funded research projects on air pollution and health, EU, WHO, EEA, and UN ECE representatives, policy makers, stakeholders, consumers organizations, and environmental NGO’s.

The conference will be held in the Brunei Gallery, SOAS in London, UK, December 11-12, 2002, immediately following the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine meeting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great London Smog event of December 1952. You can either contact Marjan Tewis (m.tewis@iras.uu.nl) or go the AIRNET website and follow directions there.
More information about the SMOG Conferences can be found at the website www.lshtm.ac.uk/smog.
For registration at the SMOG conference please send an email to smogconference@lshtm.ac.uk

INCHES funding

Did you locate a possible sponsor? Do you a private sponsor? Can we mail some information on INCHES to one of your friends? Any donations (or suggestions of possible donors) are welcome at bank account nr.: 526292490 ABN AMRO (swiftcode ABNANL 2A), Dieren, Netherlands.

Last updated 20August 2002

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