Inches

UPDATE no.11 October 2001 INCHES

October 10, 2001-The International Network on Children's Health, Environment and Safety

In this update :
Declaration
News items
INCHES funding
Topics

Declaration

After a round of comments amongst the endorsing members we now have produced this declaration as the INCHES -declaration for September 2001. Everybody can use the text for getting support within their own organsiation, network or country for the field of children's environmental health.

Declaration on Children and their health and their environment
Discussed at the INCHES Coordination Committee Meeting (Washington, 2001)

INCHES, consisting of many organisations working in the field on Children's Environmental Health, is strongly concerned about the potentially devastating and possibly irreversible effects of children's health by multiple factors in the environment. We urge all stakeholders to take prompt and effective actions to achieve significant reductions in hazardous exposures to children.

Environmental health risks to children are increasingly being recognised and the awareness is growing that there is a need to protect children from the damaging health effects of environmental degradation. The Convention on the Rights of the Child states (Article 24, paragraph 1) that a child has the right to 'the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health', particularly as they bear a disproportionate risk to the rest of the population.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence that demonstrates the wide array of children's health problems that can be brought on and/or exacerbated by environmental exposures. Examples of the major environmental health problems affecting children are:

Asthma deaths among children and young people have increased tremendously during the last decade and asthma is now the leading cause of hospital admissions for children in many countries, causing excessive costs for public health care.
Children exposed to tobacco smoke at home have more days of restricted activity, bed confinement, and missed school days each year than other children.
Lead poisoning affects millions of children aged five and under, especially in countries which continue to permit lead in gasoline and paint.
Millions of children under the age of 12 live within four miles of a toxic waste dump, or live on a waste dump.
Polluted waters can affect children when they come into contact with rivers or lakes and through the consumption of certain freshwater fish.
The re-emergence of vector-borne diseases, particularly malaria, is occurring as a result of climate and land-use changes.
The effects of desertification and deforestation on children's health are enormous.
Environmental factors affect children's health well before birth. Pregnant women's exposure to hazardous factors may cause adverse effects in the developing fetus which may become apparent at birth or later in life.
Children may face developmental defects to the endocrine system, growth or mental retardation and neurobehavioural toxicological effects as a result of environmental exposure to pesticides, persistent organic pollutants and other chemicals.
Children are at greater toxicological risk after exposure to chemicals because their systems are still developing and because they consume more food and fluids and they breathe more air, relative to their body size, than adults.
Children are at greater risk after exposure to radiation.
Children's behaviour (early hand-mouth activity, their indoor and outdoor play activities) mean that they are at increased risk of exposure to dust, soil and other environmental contaminants as compared to adults.
In several parts of the world, child labour is still accepted as a way to provide sufficient family income. In these countries an increasing number of children are at risk of occupational diseases and injuries.

Taking these facts in account INCHES would like to see action on the following points:

The best way to protect children from environmental hazards is to reduce or eliminate harmful environmental exposures. In addition, in setting protective measures, including emission standards, food safety standards and all other regulations, the relatively high exposure and susceptibility of children must be taken into account.
To build an international platform for multi-disciplinary expertise and a forum to present and discuss the latest research findings in paediatric environmental health. The overall objective is to stimulate actions that may contribute to the understanding of the relationship between the environment and the health status of children. An aim is to improve the quality of the environment and thus the health and well-being of children.
Stimulate research on the relationship between environmental contamination and children's health and advocate policy to minimise childhood exposure to environmental contaminants.
More research into the environmental causes of ill health in children, especially into neurological diseases and diseases related to endocrine development. Data from poison centres could be the basis for some of these studies.
Develop a greater awareness among health professionals of children's health and the environment and enhance public awareness regarding environmental hazards and children's health.
Encourage national governments, inter-governmental organisations and international agencies to review current standards and to set new public health and environmental standards to ensure protection of children's health.
Promote projects to protect children, particularly by identifying and stimulating research into their unique susceptibility and high exposure to environmental pollutants.
Communicate internationally about the action and research priorities needed in the different countries of the world in order to assist policy and decision making.
Facilitate contacts between individual researchers and organisations by using electronic networking; in order to have better linkages between exposure and health data via different stakeholders in the field of children's environmental health.
Promote educational efforts concerning children's environmental health threats, in order to provide better consumer information to families about children's risks, as well as to protect the unborn child from environmental pollution through sanitary education of potentially pregnant women; and to educate health professionals to identify, prevent and reduce toxic threats to children.
Apply the lessons from the histories of thalidomide, DES, lead, etc. and don't use children as guinea pigs - especially as, compared to adults, children get little or no benefit from the environmental exposures that we give them.
Put children at the centre of government policies on housing, poverty elimination, income support, and health.
Give children relevant legal protection with safety standards for chemicals that take their special vulnerabilities into account. For example provide in regulation an extra 10-fold safety margin for children, as well as provisions for the cumulative exposures of children to pesticides. 10,000 existing pesticide tolerances need to be re-assessed.
Reduce children's exposures to chemicals, radiation and other potential causes of ill-health, prioritising persistent and bioaccumulating substances, especially pesticides and other toxic chemicals to which children are exposed in food ,water, and consumer products, (such as the phthalates in children's toys), utilising the precautionary principle whenever risks are likely to be serious and irreversible.
Give the public the right to know what their children are exposed to with adequate consumer product labelling laws and accessible toxic emissions registers, like the toxic release inventories in the USA.
Improve the education and awareness of parents, teachers and other guardians of children so that they can help create safer environments for them. Equivalents of the American Academy of Pediatrics' "Handbook of Environmental Health for Children", and the "Resource Guide" and training materials for US doctors and nurses produced by the Children's Environmental Health Network, California, would be helpful in this.
Improve the work in the field of ecological education in order to stimulate children's interest to research work and activities, concerning environmental issues; and to increase children's careful attitude towards the environment.

Taking steps now to prevent disease, illness, and injury will not only diminish the potential for wide-spread children's suffering but reduce the high costs of treating illnesses which might have been avoided.

INCHES commends the commitment of many nations to negotiate an internationally binding and verifiable agreement establishing targets and timetables for meaningful reductions in emissions harmful for children.

At the same time, INCHES urges to take immediate action to advance policies designed to increase the protection of children around the world and to accelerate the development of regulation and standards that are effective in protection children's health.

The time has come for the nations of the world to act. The science is credible, and the potential impacts profound. Prudence - and a commitment to act responsibly on behalf of the world's children and all future generations - dictate a prompt and effective response.

The Coordination committee expects from each organization that endorses INCHES to send at least one item of interest of their work that could be relevant for the other participants in the network. Please send material, ideas, reports or suggestions for distribution to Peter van den Hazel or Marie Louise Bistrup. We will distribute information af general interest through e-mails, electronic networks or place it at the INCHES web-site.

News items

A new book has been published on reproductive health and the environment: "Generations at risk" by Ted Schettler, Gina Solomon and Maria Valenti. This comes from MIT press; http://mitpress.mit.edu

Women's Healthy environments Network is preliminary filming a project called: "Early exposures: children's health and the environment" . When this prpoject will be finished we will let you know about the result.

The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC) has produced a leaflet on working together to protect our shared environment. Within this brochure there is a text called: An agenda for children's health and the environment in North America. The experts called on NACEC to help develop and implement a continent-wide agenda for children's health and the environment, immediately targeting asthma and lead poisoning and developing an action plan to improve monitoring, research, establishment of standards appropriate to children's particular sensitivities and exposures, improved enforcement, capacity building at the community health level, and ensuring that parents and communities have access to information on potentially harmful substances that may affect the health of their children.

If any member of INCHES is a close follower of this process, please keep us updated on the progress that has been made by NACEC. For more information: www.cec.org

INCHES funding

Any donations (or suggestions of possible donors) are welcome at bank account nr.: 526292490 ABN AMRO (swiftcode ABNANL 2A), Dieren, the Netherlands.

Topics

In this paragraph we would like to place some items that are important for their contents. If anyone wishes to send in an abstract on any topic related to children's environmental health and safety, mail it to the email address of the update.

Panel Cautions Against Mercury Preservative in Pharmaceuticals
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

New York Times

There is no evidence that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative formerly used in childhood vaccines, poses a significant threat to the developing brain, a panel of medical experts said yesterday.

Nevertheless, in a report issued yesterday, the 15-member panel urged drug and vaccine manufacturers to redouble their efforts to remove mercury from all products used by children and pregnant women. The experts, appointed by the Institute of Medicine, said that although there was not enough evidence either to prove or disprove a link between the amounts of mercury in older vaccines and abnormal brain development, such a link was "biologically plausible." The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, advises the government on health issues.

Two years ago, vaccine manufacturers stopped adding thimerosal to vaccines given to small children out of a concern that the compound might cause brain injury. All six childhood immunizations that are required by the government are widely available without mercury.

But some vaccines more than two years old, still containing thimerosal, may remain in use. In addition, some vaccines occasionally given to small children, like flu shots, contain mercury, as do some over-the- counter products, like nasal sprays. The Institute of Medicine has no authority to force manufacturers to recall supplies of childhood vaccines containing mercury, the report said.

Parents should ask their doctors to use mercury-free vaccines, said the chairwoman of the expert panel, Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor and chairman of the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. But in the unlikely event that mercury-free vaccines are not available, Dr. McCormick said, parents should and have their children vaccinated with older products. The danger of getting a disease that can be prevented by a vaccine is very real, she said, whereas the danger of being harmed by the tiny amounts of mercury in older vaccines is extremely remote.

Parents of autistic children who worry that the mercury in vaccines might cause the disorder praised the panel for taking their concerns seriously and for urging that exposure to mercury be minimized.

The idea that mercury in vaccines might contribute to autism was raised several years ago when the incidence of the disorder apparently and inexplicably started to rise. While most experts believe that genes are involved, they say it is theoretically possible that something in the environment might contribute.

Vaccinations came under suspicion when the parents of autistic children noted that symptoms of the disorder, like lack of social awareness and language delay, appeared shortly after their children got their measles, mumps and rubella shot at age 18 months. Many blamed the vaccine, even though it did not contain mercury.

A child's first 18 months is a period of extensive brain development, when many things could go awry to cause the abnormal organization of the brain. Earlier this year, the Institute of Medicine discounted any link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism.

But mercury, a known neurotoxin, remained a possibility. Thimerosal has been used as a preservative since the 1930's to kill bacteria and fungi in vials containing multiple doses of vaccine. A reservative is needed if vials contain more than one dose, to prevent the growth of organisms that may enter the vial after the cap is pierced by a needle. Once injected, thimerosal breaks down into a compound called ethylmercury.
Before 1990, most babies got only one shot that contained mercury, the report said. After 1990, two more vaccines containing it were added to the required list for all infants.

By the end of the decade, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that some infants were being exposed to cumulative amounts of ethylmercury, and instructed manufacturers to remove thimerosal. Vials of vaccine are now made as single doses, requiring only one needle puncture, so that no preservatives need to be used.

No one knows if extremely low doses of ethylmercury are dangerous, Dr. McCormick said in a news conference. Federal safety standards have been set for a closely related compound, methylmercury, which is a breakdown product of industrial mercury in the environment and is found in certain seafoods. Whether studies of methylmercury apply across the board to ethylmercury is just not known, she said.

Epidemiological studies are under way to examine whether there is any link between thimerosal and autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder or delayed language development, Dr. McCormick said. Preliminary results of one unpublished study in children who received higher than usual levels of thimerosal show no increased risk of autism. The results did, however, show a small but significant increase of a risk of speech delay in children with attention deficit order.

- Any reactions or additions are welcome -

Last updated 13 February 2002

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