How does pollution damage childrens health?

As practising paediatricians we may suffer from a certain cognitive dissonance about environmental pollution: we have been told that it is bad for children's health, but only rarely can we directly attribute a child's illness to their pollution exposure, at least in the West. The epidemiological evidence of a link between various form of pollution and ill-health has been covered in depth by a Lancet special commission (Landrigan P et al. 2017. http://ift.tt/2C07Lxs). This lengthy feature looks at the issue from a global perspective, and follows on from a similarly authoritative and disconcerting report from two Royal Colleges (the RCP and RCPCH), focussing on the problem in the UK ('Every breath we take' http://bit.ly/1Nv4CIa). Both reports deal with the effects on populations as a whole rather than just children, but both cite extensive literature that should convince anyone of the harms pollution can cause to young people. This...

from # All Medicine by Alexandros G. Sfakianakis via alkiviadis.1961 on Inoreader http://ift.tt/2z8lvrg