By Chioma Umeha
Each year, environmental pollutants cost an
estimated 1.7 million lives among children under five, according to World
Health Organisation (WHO) reports released Monday.
The causes include unsafe water, lack of
sanitation, poor hygiene practices and indoor and outdoor pollution, as well as
injuries.
The new numbers equate to these pollutants being
the cause of one in four deaths of children between one month and five years
old.
One new report highlights that the most common
causes of child death are preventable through interventions already available
to the communities most affected. These causes are diarrhea, malaria and
pneumonia, which can be prevented using insecticide-treated bed nets, clean
cooking fuels and improved access to clean water.
“A polluted environment is a deadly one,
particularly for young children,” Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general,
said in a statement, adding that, “Their developing organs and immune systems,
and smaller bodies and airways, make them especially vulnerable to dirty air
and water.”
Infants exposed to indoor or outdoor air
pollution, including secondhand smoke, have an increased risk of pneumonia
during childhood as well as an increased risk of chronic respiratory diseases,
such as asthma, for the rest of their lives, one report states.
The global body also highlighted the increased
risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer from exposure to air pollution.
More than 90 percent of the world’s population is
thought to breathe air that violates quality guidelines set by the WHO.
The report listed top environmental causes of
deaths among children under five to including, respiratory infections. For instance, it says: “570,000 deaths in children under
five is linked to indoor and outdoor air pollution and secondhand smoke;
361,000 deaths in children under five is also linked to diarrhea contacted from
poor access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene.
The next are deaths in first month of life. WHO
says that 270,000 deaths which occur in children under one month could be
prevented by access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene in health
facilities, and by reducing air pollution.
The apex global health body further said that
malaria which causes 200,000 deaths in children under five could be prevented
by environmental improvements, including reducing mosquito breeding sites or
covering drinking water storage. It also says that 200,000 deaths among
children under five is linked to their environments, including poisonings,
falls and drowning and others classified as unintentional injuries.
The reports further listed ways in which these
risk factors can be removed to prevent disease and deaths.
“Investing in the removal of environmental risks
to health, such as improving water quality or using cleaner fuels, will result
in massive health benefits,” said Dr. Maria Neira, director of the WHO’s
Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.
“A polluted environment results in a heavy toll on the health of our children.”
The growth of electronic and electrical waste is
also a concern, according to the report. If not disposed of correctly, waste
can expose children to toxins that can harm intelligence and cause attention
deficits, lung damage and cancer.
Also among the fears: an increasing risk of
climate change, due to rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, boosting
pollen growth and possibly asthma. An estimated 44 percent of asthma cases
among children worldwide are thought to be related to environmental exposures,
the reports said.
In addition to highlighting the burden borne by
young children, the new reports suggest ways in which risk factors, and
therefore death rates, can be
reduced.
These include reducing air pollution, improving
access to clean water and sanitation, protecting pregnant women from secondhand
smoke and building safer environments in order to reduce accidents and
injuries.
“Both indoor and outdoor air pollution have an
important effect on the health and development of children, and not just in the
stereotypical ‘polluted cities’ context but also for very poor rural families
who cook indoors,” said Joy Lawn, professor of maternal reproductive and child
health epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“Clean water is taken for granted by families in
high-income countries, and yet those children in the hottest climates, facing
the greatest risks of infectious diseases, are the very ones with least access
to clean water.”
But Lawn added that pollution is not the only risk
factor when it comes to child mortality.
“We also need to be careful in attributing these
deaths just to dirty water or pollution,” she said. “To prevent deaths from
pneumonia, we also need vaccines and antibiotics; from malaria, we also need
bed nets and anti-malarials. It is not just about pollution.”
Other potential solutions mentioned in the reports
are removing mold and pests from housing, removing lead paint, ensuring
sanitation and good nutrition at schools and using better urban planning to
create more green spaces in cities. Safe management of industrial waste by
industries is also highlighted, along with stopping the use of hazardous
pesticides and child labor in agriculture.
The report “highlights the scale of the problem of
how environmental pollution affects the health of children across the globe,”
said John Holloway, professor of allergy and respiratory genetics at the
University of Southampton. Holloway recently authored a report on the lifelong
impact of air pollution.
“We must also remember that it is not just the
acute effects of pollution on children’s health mentioned in the report that we
need to be concerned about, it is also the potential long-term effects of
exposure to pollutants in early life that can have lifelong effects on health
and well-being,” he said.
Holloway also stressed that this is not a concern
solely for developing countries. “Exposures such as air pollution and
secondhand tobacco smoke affects the health of children in developed countries
such as the UK as well,” he said.
But, like the WHO, he also stressed that things
can be done to help solve the problem and said authorities and individuals
should act now — as well as think long-term — to protect the health of future
generations.
“We all have a responsibility for reducing
environmental pollution,” he said. “This is going to require changes in society
such as better monitoring of pollution and taking into account the true
long-term economic cost of pollution when assessing the cost of measures to
reduce environmental pollution.”
