UPDATE no. 55
Dear member of INCHES,
In this update:
News
Earth Day
Call for factsheets
Articles
Big US Study
India tops Asian air pollution charts
Conferences
Reports
Interesting website
INCHES website moved to www.inchesnetwork.net
We are looking for a volunteer who can assist in updating the pages of the website.
News
April 22, 2005 was the 35th Anniversary of Earth Day
Earth Day, which began in 1970, is now celebrated by millions of people worldwide. This year is its 35th anniversary, and around the world, hundreds of thousands of nongovernmental organizations, governments, teachers, and faith-based groups, among others, are making plans to declare that they are part of something extraordinary: a worldwide movement to protect our planet, our children, and our future. This year, Earth Day Network’s theme is "Protect Our Children and Our Future." Despite the extraordinary and often false obstacles that we face in our efforts to protect our natural resources and our biodiversity, few will dare argue with the moral imperative to protect our children from harm.
As a consequence of that imperative, there was a call on governments, corporations, faith-based organizations, and all people in our troubled world to work to ensure that children everywhere are healthy, educated, and free from oppression. This Earth Day, hundreds of major events took place around the world, in communities large and small, in classrooms, in parks and on beaches, in places of worship. From Kiev to Beijing, from India to Romania, from Africa to the Americas, it was demonstrated.
Call for factsheets
We received quite a few factsheets or links to factsheets on the internet. These factsheets are mainly in the english language. We are calling members to send their available factsheets in other languages to be added to the database we are forming. So again, INCHES is calling all its members to send factsheets about any item on children’s environmental health. They could be in any language, ranging from lead poisoning, asthma, allergies, chemical, ventilation at school, etc. We are trying to build a very complete overview which we also share with the HECA network. So please send you electronic version or hard copy to the INCHES address: INCHES, pobox 163, 6950 AD Dieren, the Netherlands, or use this email of the update for your reply. Thanks very much in advance. Please try not to postpone your assistance as we would like to have a very substantial database of factsheets available in the next month for everyone.
Articles
Big US Study
U.S. health officials are launching an unprecedented national study to assess how children's surroundings - from the air they breathe and the water they drink to the homes and communities they live in - influence development and long-term health. The National Children's Study, an ambitious 25-year, $2.7-billion effort, will start by identifying 100,000 pregnant women and will catalog their environmental exposures through the pregnancy. The children will be followed from birth until age 21. Scientists will track what mothers eat, drink, smoke, imbibe and inhale during the pregnancy. They will collect samples of umbilical cord blood, placental tissue and breast milk, and they will test food, drinking water, air, urine and household dust for traces of pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants. The study also will record whether children have siblings or pets, their parents' parenting styles, even how much television they watch.
The huge undertaking aims to pinpoint preventable causes of debilitating childhood conditions - including asthma, obesity, autism and schizophrenia - which appear to be striking more children despite the advances of modern medicine.
Volunteers will be recruited from 101 locations around the USA, and enrolment is scheduled to start in January 2007, provided funding is adequate. To make sure the study yields a population sample that's representative of the nation, recruiters will target specific neighbourhoods, where they will identify households with women of child-bearing age and invite them to participate.
Implementation plans are tentative because although Congress authorized the National Children's Study in 2000 with the Children's Health Act of 2000, it has not been fully funded. It's possible that not all of the initial eightsites will be funded in 2007.
Among the questions the study seeks to answer are:
Do prenatal infections contribute to neuro-developmental disabilities such as cerebral palsy and autism?
Can frequent, low-level exposure to non-persistent pesticides during early development impair school performance later on?
Can breast-feeding infants lower their risk of obesity?
And how does television affect brain development?
Both indoor and outdoor pollution are believed to play roles in exacerbating asthma, the most common disease of childhood, for example, but experts say little is known about its root causes. One of the hypotheses being studied is that maternal stress during pregnancy plays a role.
Experts suspect environmental factors, such as early exposure to even low levels of pesticides, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls, methyl mercury and ethanol can impair neurobehavioral development and may result in learning disabilities. Attention deficit disorder and developmental disorders are estimated to affect almost one in five children.
One hypothesis that will be tested is that there is an association between autism and prenatal viral infections.
The National Children's Study will collect so much data that scientists will be able to learn about the complex interplay between environmental exposures and genetic predisposition, as well as about the effects of multiple different exposures.
Schizophrenia, childhood diabetes and autism are familial diseases that also appear to have an environmental trigger of some kind, Scheidt, one of the investigators said. By identifying preventable triggers, the study could potentially reduce the incidence of disease.
India tops Asian air pollution charts
After Uttara Choudhury AGRA, India, AFP
People living in Indian cities New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Pune have been breathing some of
the most polluted air in Asia, but Jakarta and China's Chongqing are also bad. Rapid industrial growth and streets choked with cars put Asian cities among the worst in the world, said Michael Carter, World Bank country director in India, on a global environment meeting.
"There has been dramatic progress in New Delhi and Bombay in the past year to have better air
quality but unfortunately the story remains that both these Indian cities have dangerously high
levels of suspended particles in the air," Carter told the annual "Better Air Quality" conference.
"Several Asian cities have to use cleaner fuels and enforce stringent emission norms for cars.
"We tend to ignore the fact that air pollution is the second biggest cause of maternal and
child mortality," he warned. "India has a particularly serious problem in terms of indoor air pollution from smoke rising from stoves and fires inside homes," Carter said.
According to a joint World Bank and Asian Development Bank study of air pollution for 20 major
Asian cities between 2000 and 2003, the level of suspended particulate matter considered the
most dangerous pollutant was above World Health Organization (WHO) mandated safety limits in at
least 10.
New Delhi topped the list with spikes of between 350 and 800 micrograms of suspended
particulates per cubic meter. The WHO recommends less than 50 micrograms.
Officials at the conference said it was difficult to say if Mexico City or New Delhi should be
classed the most polluted in the world because of monthly variations. Jakarta reported figures just above 250 while Bombay was just below 250 as was Chongqing in southwest China.
Next came Calcutta, followed by the Western Indian city of Pune. Shanghai came seventh, trailed by Manila, Osaka, Tokyo and Seoul. Hong Kong was just above 50, with Busan, Bangkok and Colombo while Singapore was below 50. Hanoi, Beijing, Indonesia's Surabaya and Taipei won a clean bill of health for particulates.
Dhaka, Kathmandu and Ho Chi Minh City are being added to the ongoing monitoring scheme.
Officials also said other several Chinese and Indian cities would probably merit a place on the
list which was based on information collected by local and national government agencies.
Of the 20 cities surveyed, only Singapore fell within safety limits for all key pollutants: carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide as well as suspended particulates.
"Singapore has very clean air which has a lot to do with its strict pollution controls," said
Robert M. O'Keefe from the New York-based Health Effects Institute.
Singapore is the only country in Asia which restricts the number of cars on the road by
auctioning the rights to own a vehicle.
India boasts 66 million vehicles on the roads, with seven million added just last year,
according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. Nearly 10,000 new cars jostle for
space in New Delhi every month.
Similarly, car sales in China last year more than doubled to two million from the year before.
"Air pollution is an area of deep concern for Asia, more so as the economy grows and
industrialization continues," said P.M Van Heeswijk, chief of the sustainable development
department of the Asian Development Bank.
"Rapid economic growth of the region has been good for Asia and good for the world. But it has
not come without a heavy price," he added.
Conferences:
EU Meeting under presidency of Luxembourg, 13-15 June
This meeting will be related to the EU Action Plan on Environment and Health. The first two days will be dedicated to the follow-up of the technical working groups. These groups consist of member state representatives and experts. The third day will be open to other stakeholders. There are two topics going to be addressed: indoor air quality and health; environmental health medicine. More information and an agenda will follow.
Children's World Summit (repeat announcement)
UNEP is organizing the first Children's World Summit for the Environment in Japan from 26 to 29 July 2005 in conjunction with Expo 2005. It will be
hosted by the Aichi Prefectural Government, the City of Toyota and the City of Toyohashi.
If you have any question contact Joyce.Sang@unep.org
World Information Transfer's 14th International Conference on Health and Environment: Global
Partners for Global Solutions (repeat announcement)
Theme: "Millennium Development Goals: Bridging Health and Environmental Policies for Action"
At United Nations Headquarters, New York; April 28th and 29th, 2005
FOR INFORMATION PLEASE EMAIL wit1986@aol.com OR VISIT WEBSITE www.worldinfo.org
The organization of the Health and Environmental Ministerial Meeting of the Americas will cooperate with NGOs to prepare this meeting. This meeting will be attended by the health and environment ministers. We hope for a powerful agenda with children’s health and environment as an important topic.
The Ministerial meeting (HEMA) will take place in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on June 18 and 19, 2005
Reports
No reports received.
Interesting website
On lead poisoning prevention: www.health.ri.gov/lead
