Shape the Future of Life · Healthy Environments for Children
 
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IN THE COMMUNITY: Priorities for Creating Healthy Places for Children
Six groups of environmental health hazards must be tackled as priority areas—household water security, lack of hygiene and poor sanitation, air pollution, vector-borne diseases, chemical hazards, and unintentional injuries (accidents).
Reliable access to safe water contributes greatly to health—enabling and encouraging hygiene through hand washing, food hygiene, laundry and general household cleanliness. Contaminated water may transmit diseases, and lack of water may prevent minimum hygiene to protect health. The most important disease transmitted by water is diarrhea, the second biggest child-killer in the world, causing 1.3 million child deaths per year.
 The safe disposal of human feces—including those of children—is a prerequisite to protecting health. In the absence of basic sanitation, a number of major diseases are transmitted through fecal pollution of the household and community environment. These include diarrhea, schistosomiasis, hepatitis A and E, dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever. Lack of sanitation is also associated with infection with helminthes and with trachoma. Globally, 2.4 billion people, most of them living in peri-urban or rural areas in developing countries, do not have access to any type of improved sanitation facilities. Children and adults must be encouraged to wash their hands with soap or ash before meals and after defecating.
Air pollution is a major environment-related health threat to children and a risk factor for both acute and chronic respiratory disease as well as other illnesses. Around 2 million children under 5 die every year from acute respiratory infections. Many are aggravated by environmental hazards. Indoor air pollution is a major factor associated with acute respiratory infections in both rural and urban areas of developing countries. Outdoor air pollution, mainly from traffic and industrial processes, remains a serious problem in cities throughout the world, particularly in the everexpanding megacities of developing countries. It is estimated that a quarter of the world's population is exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants such as particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and other chemicals.
Vector-borne diseases are a particular threat to children because their immune systems are unable to cope with assaults by infectious agents and also because childhood behaviors may increase vulnerability to disease. Such diseases include:
Many chemical hazards are present in children's homes, schools, playgrounds and communities. Chemical pollutants are released into the environment by unregulated industries or are emitted from heavy traffic or toxic waste sites. About 50,000 children under age 14 die every year as a result of accidental poisoning. Pesticides unsafely used, stored or disposed of may harm children and their environment. Household cleaners, kerosene, solvents, pharmaceuticals and other chemical products become dangerous if they are kept in inappropriate containers or in places that are accessible to children. Small children are “natural explorers”: they may ingest dangerous chemical products and suffer acute poisoning. The result can be life threatening.
Chronic exposure to pollutants in the environment is linked to damage to the nervous and immune systems, and to effects on reproductive function and on development. This is because exposure occurs during periods of special susceptibility in the growing child or adolescent. For example, children are especially vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of lead in paint and air, which may reduce their IQ and cause learning disabilities. They are also vulnerable to the developmental effects of mercury released into the environment or present as a food contaminant. Most exposures to toxic chemicals and pollutants are preventable. A number of tools and mechanisms are available to help identify chemical hazards, create safer environments and prevent children's exposure.
Unintentional injuries such as road traffic injuries, poisonings, falls, burns and drowning killed an estimated 685,000 children under the age of 15 in 2001. Unintentional injuries among children are a global problem, but in certain regions of the world, children and adolescents are disproportionately affected. Part 2: The Solutions |
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