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UPDATE no. 34 - December 16 2002 INCHES
The International Network on Children's Health, Environment
Dear member of INCHES,
In this update :
New member
News items
ISDE.Latin America - Activities: September - October 2002
Air Pollution Damages Across Generations - Study
Upcoming Conferences
INCHES funding
Development and Relief Ginger Group ”DEREGG”
Contact person: Mr. Bayubasire Djanda Joel, deregginfo@yahoo.fr
The organization is named : “ DEVELOPMENT AND RELEF GINGER GROUP( DEREGG) “ , created on the 4th of January 2000 and officially approved and registered by competent authorities on the 26th of December 2001 as a non profit-making Youths organization working for the promotion of the population of its implementation area, especially vulnerable youths put at a disadvantage by lack of Education, Professional training, Employment, Information and Communication Technology and Democracy. Our Headquarters is located in the commune of Ibanda, city of Bukavu, South – Kivu province, DR-Congo.
Canadian Environmental Network (CEN)
Contact person: Mr Chantal Bois, National Caucus Coordinator:
chantal@cen-rce.org, Web site: www.cen-rce.org
World Health Day, 7 April 2003, theme Children’s health and the environment.
(more news on what organisation will organize can be inserted here in next updates)
International Society of Doctors for the Environment America Latina (ISDE.AL.) Regional Coordination: Asociación Argentina de Médicos por el Medio Ambiente (AAMMA) under the umbrella of INCHES.
Activities: September - October 2002
ISDE.AL announces VERY GOOD NEWS: In Harm’s Way Spanish version: “En la línea de fuego” We are very happy to share this good news with all of you. PSR (Boston) and ISDE.AL (AAMMA) cooperated to make this dream to come true and we are able to say that the Spanish version is now available.
Knowing of the important impact that the English version of the book had in the international community and worried because of the lack of information in Spanish on CEH and toxic exposures, ISDE.AL (AAMMA) decided to face the translation work more than a year ago. Ted Schettler and Maria Valenti were important partners since the beginning and encouraged the work in the understanding of the projection that the Spanish version will have for sure in the Spanish speakers’ world. We are proud to say that on September 30 we had the book in our hands and the title in Spanish is “En la linea de Fuego”.
We also want to thanks Fundación Avina because of the support they constantly give to AAMMA projects.
Carried out activities:
Johannesburg, South Africa, September 1, 2002: AAMMA- ISDE.AL participated in the launching of the GLOBAL ALLIANCE on CEH by WHO were the proposal was introduced personally by Mrs. Brundtland (General director of WHO). The General Director of UNICEF, represents of EPA and EEB and the Ministry of Health of South Africa were also present. Mrs. Brundtland mentioned in her opening speech the recognition of ISDE and INCHES in collaboration since the beginning to this proposal.
City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 7, 2002: AAMMA-ISDE.AL was invited to participate as speaker in the training workshop “Environmental conflicts and health impacts” organized by the Argentine Association of Journalists and the Pan-American Health Organization. The goal of this workshop was training journalists on the relation between environmental changes and its impacts on human health and the impact on Children’s´ health was underlined with a very high interest showed by the journalists.
City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 16, 2002: In the framework of the activities of the Subcommittee of Children’s Health and Environment of the Argentine Society of Pediatrics (SAP), AAMMA organized in collaboration with Greenpeace, Pat Costner, a conference at SAP. In front of a crowded auditory constituted by environmentalists, physicians, toxicologists, educators, psychologists and lawyers, Pat Costner lectured about persistent organic pollutants, their irreversible health effects, prevention on chemical exposure and actions to avoid children´s environmental diseases. Pat Costner is a recognized scientist with a long trajectory of activities on environmental chemical contamination. She is author and co-author of many reports and publications related to environmental and health impacts caused by persistent organic pollutants. She is recognized for being scientific consultant of the international Greenpeace Chemical´s Campaign.
City of Montevideo, Uruguay, November 28, 2002: ISDE.AL organized with the Uruguayan Society of Pediatrics, the Environmental Health Office and the Ministry of Public Health of Uruguay a half a day training workshop for pediatricians “Environmental Risks for Children’s Health”. In this introductory workshop AAMMA experts team will focus on environmental risks for children’s health, the need of a environmental history, possible environmental causes of cancer, environmental contamination effects on development and special security standards for children.
News from EU project PINCHE
The PINCHE contract is being signed. Our aim is to start on the 2nd of January 2003. The Project Management team (Peter van den Hazel, Marie Bistrup and Moniek Zuurbier) will start in early January to prepare the first steps of the 3-year project. The coordinating organisation Hulpverlening Gelderland Midden (Public Health Services Gelderland Midden) has hired one project worker (Moniek Zuurbier) who will work on PINCHE for part of her time. A PINCHE website will start early 2003.
A kick-off meeting is scheduled on 6 and 7 February with all the contractors and members in Amsterdam. The purpose will be to get the working groups started and to outline the work for the coming years. More information about this meeting will follow soon. This meeting will be open for other interested parties which are willing to participate the coming years in the Policy Interpretation Network on children’s health and environment.
According to the proposal, six working groups will start right away: exposure, epidemiology, toxicology, health risk and impact assessment, socio-economic impact and science/policy interface. Designated leaders are:
Exposure assessment (Alena Bartonova will lead this), Wojciech Hanke for epidemiology, Roberto Ronchetti for toxicology, Peter van den Hazel for Health Risk Assessment, Gabrielle Bolte for the Socio-economic impact and Gaudenz Silberschmidt for science/policy interface. There will be the two 'Annual Conferences on Children's Health and Environment' that will be open for all stakeholders.
Informal meeting of organizations active in children’s health and environment
3-4 October 2002, Paris
The Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health will take place in Budapest, from 23-25 June 2004. The theme of the Budapest Conference is “The Future for our Children”. As requested by the European countries at a special intergovernmental meeting in Lucca, Italy, on 18-19 April 2002 and further supported by the European Environment and Health Committee (EEHC, and Steering Committee for the Budapest Conference) at its 6th session in June 2002, a major policy outcome is expected to be a children’s environment and health action plan for Europe. Aware that a number of initiatives on the issue of children’s health and environment are being developed by various organizations and agencies, the EEHC decided that a gathering of these bodies would be useful to exchange information in order to build upon existing activities, to avoid possible overlap of activities and to identify gaps that should be addressed. From the perspective of the EEHC, this meeting would be particularly helpful as background and possible input to the children’s environment and health action plan for Europe (CEHAPE) that will be developed.
The meeting, hosted by the OECD in Paris and chaired by Dr Heinz Schreiber Co-chair of the EEHC, was attended by 22 representatives from 16 intergovernmental, international and nongovernmental organizations, as well as observers from the Office of Children’s Health Protection of the US Environment Protection Agency who were working/visiting at OECD. The meeting was built around reports by the representatives of the organizations and discussion. Organizations were asked to complete Activity and Event Profiles on their work related to children’s health and environment. The PowerPoint presentations and handouts that were made available electronically to the Secretariat can be accessed on the EEHC website (www.eehc.dk) for a limited period, after which they can be obtained upon request from the EEHC Secretariat (ecp@who.dk).
The major information and discussion points raised can be given on request in next update or found on the above mentioned website.
Air Pollution Damages Across Generations - Study
by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent Reuters
WASHINGTON - Air pollution from steel mills causes genetic damage that fathers can pass to the next generation, according to researchers in Canada.
It is not clear if the genetic damage could harm anyone's health, but tests on mice showed that those allowed to breathe air from near a smoke-belching steel mill had fewer pups and those pups had more genetic mutations than their country cousins. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that steel mill workers and people living near those mills should be checked for damage to their health, said the researchers, at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. "Our findings suggest that there is an urgent need to investigate the genetic consequences associated with exposure to chemical pollution through the inhalation of urban and industrial air," they wrote in their report. Christopher Somers, James Quinn and colleagues did an earlier study that showed gulls living near a steel mill on Lake Ontario had genetic mutations. In this study, they raised two groups of mice -- one half a mile downwind of the mill and one about 20 miles away. The mice made to breathe the polluted air had 1.5 times to twice as many mutations in their DNA as the mice breathing fresh country air, Somers and colleagues reported. They did not look to see if any important genes were affected -- such a study would have been too expensive and would have taken too many mice, Quinn said in an interview. But it is accepted scientific practice to look at especially mutation-prone areas of DNA for a tendency to mutation. DNA mutates at a regular rate -- it's the process that drives evolution. But extra mutations can lead to trouble, and genetic mutation is what causes cancer and other diseases.
Virtually all the extra mutations were inherited from the father mice, the researchers said. While this does not mean that females are not susceptible, it does suggest that steel workers, who are mostly male, have an extra risk, they said. Steel mills have been around for a long time, but it is not clear whether people who live near them have a higher genetic mutation rate. "There has been work showing elevated cancer rates for steel mill workers," Quinn said. "For people living near steel mills it's a little bit tougher to show. Some might work in the steel mills, some might smoke, some might drink a lot." Somers said the study, ironically, was undertaken to show that efforts to clean up Hamilton harbor had worked. "This had been one of most polluted places, if not the most polluted place, in Canada," Somers, a graduate student studying under Quinn, said. "There has been a concerted effort to clean up Hamilton harbor and reduce air emissions."
The experiment had been aimed at showing these had helped. "We haven't really seen that," he said. Integrated steel mills, which produce new steel, use huge amounts of coal and emit hundreds of compounds, many of which could affect DNA, Somers said. "Our hypothesis is that it is a group of substances called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. These result from incomplete fossil fuel combustion," Somers said.
Meeting in Germany
Vom 20.-22.3.2003 findet in Osnabrück der 4. Kongress "Kindheit in Bewegung" statt. Veranstalter ist die Universität Osnabrück, Frau Prof. Renate Zimmer. Das Netzwerk wird dort ein Forum "Bespielbare Stadt - auf dem Weg zu einer verbesserten Kindergesundheit" am 22.3. von 10.30-12.00 veranstalten. Weitere Infos über den Kongress unter: www.kongress.kindheit.uni-osnabrueck.de
International Children's Conference (see UNEP website)
Date: 2003, New London, Connecticut, USA from 7 to 11 July.
2004, Japan (tentative); The dates could change depending on the logistics (a clear decision will be made by January 2003)
Did you locate a possible sponsor? Do you know a private sponsor? Can we mail some information on INCHES to one of your friends? Any donations (or suggestions of possible donors) are welcome at bank account nr.: 526292490 ABN AMRO (swiftcode ABNANL 2A), Dieren, Netherlands
Last updated Januray 16, 2003
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