Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units: A Unique Role in Protecting Children’s Health

• In Event: 1-074 - Increasing Public Understanding of Environmental Influences on Children’s Health Through Community Engagement

Integrative Statement

Environmental exposures in the early stages of childhood development, including before birth, can have life-long impacts on health outcomes.. While many of these exposures are ubiquitous, children are uniquely vulnerable due to their physiological differences, behaviors and dietary patterns. Children drink more water, eat more food, and breathe more air per body weight than adults, and their natural defenses are less developed. Mouthing behaviors,crawling, and playing close to the ground create additional exposures to toxicants through inhalation and ingestion of dust and dirt.
Research indicates that effects of exposure to chemicals, even at low doses, and in combination, can impact the growth and development of children even into adulthood. Impacts on neurodevelopment (e.g. lower IQ, behavioral abnormalities), immune function, and reproductive development (e.g. infertility, delayed or early pubertal development) have been documented, and environmental exposures have been implicated in a range of adverse health outcomes such as asthma, preterm birth, low-birth rates, birth defects, childhood leukemia, autism spectrum disorders, obesity, and early pubertal development. Factors in a child’s environment that can impact health include exposures to air pollution (e.g. particulate matter, carbon dioxide, ozone), water pollution, toxicants (e.g. lead, carbon monoxide, pesticides, radon, mold, secondhand tobacco smoke), consumer products (e.g. biphenols, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, phthalates).
Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSUs) were created to address the lack of healthcare practitioners who were sufficiently trained to evaluate and treat children with exposures to environmental health hazards. There is one PEHSU located in each of the ten EPA federal regions and each PEHSU includes a board-certified pediatrician, family physician, occupational and environmental medicine physician, or nurse practitioner, along with consultants in toxicology and obstetrics and gynecology. Concerned parents, communities, physicians, and public health entities can access PEHSUs via regional hotlines. In addition to responding to requests for information, they offer advice on prevention, diagnosis, management, and the treatment of environmentally-related health effects in children. They consult with public health, environmental agencies and community groups and provide training to physicians, nurses and other health professionals in children’s environmental health. PEHSUs are academically based, typically at university medical centers, and are located across the United States and Canada. Funding comes from the the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control via the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Author

• Susan Buchanan, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author