By Brian Bienkowski for Environmental Health News
Fossil fuels represent a two-pronged
attack on the health of children, a leading health scientist has warned. To
foster health and well-being in future generations, society needs to
dramatically decrease dependence on dirty energy.
In
a commentary summarizing the key science around
fossil fuels and children’s health, Frederica Perera, a professor and
researcher at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the
Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, argues the science clearly
shows that both toxic air emission and climate change as a result of fossil
fuel emissions pose grave dangers to children.
The benefits to children’s health and
future economy from a reduction in fossil fuel use are enormous—$230 billion per
year, according to researchers—and must factor into any policy
arguments.
Beyond the scientific and economic arguments for reducing the burning of fossil fuels, there is a “strong moral imperative to protect our most vulnerable populations,” Perera wrote in the commentary published today in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Debate over energy use and regulation,
she said in an interview, must “look at the full cost” of continued reliance on
fossil fuels.
“We must include health costs,” she
said. “As a nation we need to convince policymakers to think in an integrated
way when it comes to climate change, public health, energy and the
environment.”
"As a nation we need to convince policymakers to think in an integrated way when it comes to climate change, public health, energy and the environment."-Frederica Perera, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Burning fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, and oil—releases a toxic mix of compounds, including particulate matter, mercury, carbon monoxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Exposure to such pollutants, both as a fetus and during early childhood, has been associated with a bunch of health problems in kids: low birth weights, preterm births, asthma, reduced IQs, depression and anxiety to name a few.
“A lot of it is from inflammation, a
process our body just doesn’t like,” said Lori Byron, a pediatrician based in
Hardin, Montana, and member of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a nonprofit
advocating for policies to address climate change. “The list [of health
effects] just keeps growing.”
Those same fossil fuels are the largest
source of greenhouse gases, which drive global climate change. Global warming
is projected to increase heat, droughts and storm intensity in many regions,
which can lead to food insecurity for kids, bolstered bug-driven diseases such
as the Zika virus, and heat related illness.
Also, as droughts and extreme heat feed
social and political instability, there are the mental health effects on
children forced to migrate, often from one poor country to another.
"We've been focused too much on
polar bears and ice caps, not what impacts people's daily lives," said
Michael Green, chief executive officer at the Center for Environmental
Health.
Children, with brains and bodies still
developing, are more sensitive and vulnerable to all of these problems.
“The children I worry about most are
those kids in the worst situations already, poor, living in coastal cities,
already dealing with marginal health and maybe dealing with other pollutants,
like lead from water,” said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the
Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of
Public Health and a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“Climate
change is amplifying all of those effects, from food security, to displacement
of families, to mobilization of pollutants in soil,” he said.
There are other “synergistic” effects
between climate change and air toxics as well, Perera said, such as worsening
ground-level ozone, which is formed when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic
compounds interact. Warmer temperatures hasten the formation. “Greater
concentrations of ozone at ground level greatly exacerbates asthma in
children,” she said.
“There’s also cumulative impacts on
children and babies in utero of having exposure to air toxics, and associated
effects on birth outcomes and health and development, and then some are also
getting insults, stresses from climate change—malnutrition, excess disease,
more pollution, and more heat related disorders,” she said.
The impacts can last a lifetime.
"The harm may be experienced in the first months or years, but it plays
out over the entire life," Perera said. "Respiratory illness is a
risk factor for COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] in adulthood.
ADHD, reduced IQ, autism, these don’t just disappear, but persist and affect
function, well-being and the ability to contribute to society."
The price tag to all this? Coal plants
alone cost the U.S. an estimated $100 billion a year due
to health impacts. And the World Health Organization estimated that climate
change would cost the planet up to $4 billion a year by 2030 due to deaths and
disease.
But those costs can be turned into
savings through reduced health costs. Increasing renewables such as wind and
solar power to 36 percent of global energy consumption by 2030 could help avoid
an estimated $230 billion of health costs, according to a 2015 study.
In the U.S., a study released
this month estimated
that a national power plant standard that would achieve a 35 percent reduction
in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 would net approximately $33 billion a year
in health cost savings.
Perera sees progress: The global
commitment to reduce greenhouse gases at the United Nations’ Paris climate
talks last year is a prime example. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, stayed
by the Supreme Court for now, could lead to an estimated $55 billion to $93
billion in climate- and health-related benefits in 2030, according to the Obama
Administration.
Perera said that by framing energy
policy as a children’s health issue, politicians might be able to cut through
some of the impasse blocking fossil fuel reform.
“It’s a value we all share," she
said. "Every culture, every family, every person cares about vulnerable
children and making sure they’re protected from harm.”
For questions or feedback about this piece, contact Brian
Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.
