A first-of-its kind study aims to tease out the link between pollution and cancer in children.
Jennifer Sass, Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan and Simon Strong for Environmental Health News
American Childhood Cancer Organization
"Prevention
is the cure for child/teen cancer." This is the welcoming statement on a
website called 'TheReasonsWhy.Us', where families affected
by childhood cancers can sign up for
a landmark new study into the potential environmental causes.
The
study is a joint project between Texas Children's Hospital, part of the world's
largest medical center, and The Oliver Foundation, founded by the parents of a
12-year-old boy who died 36 hours after he was diagnosed with acute myeloid
leukemia, one week after the onset of headaches.
After
signing up, participants are contacted by the hospital's medical school, Baylor College of Medicine,
to fill out a questionnaire about their environment going back from
pre-conception through pregnancy and childhood, to identify chemical contaminants
in the places that they live, learn, work and play, to the point where they
developed cancer.
When
Oliver died in 2015, his parents Simon and Vilma Strong struggled to understand
what may have led to their son's cancer, and whether it could have been
prevented. They agonized over having used Roundup – the herbicide containing
glyphosate, which is linked to leukemia –
to kill weeds in their yard and garden. Or could it have been the crumb rubber
artificial turf athletic fields, made with toxic petrochemicals, where their
goalkeeper son had played soccer?
In
addition to cancer, exposures to harmful chemicals can lead to learning and
behavioral impairments, developmental delays, reproductive harm, and chronic
diseases including autoimmune disease, asthma, and obesity. The important work
of preventing these health harms can only be done if we increase our efforts to
identify the causes— including industrial and environmental pollutants— and
reduce or replace them to prevent harmful exposures.
Sadly,
as the 2020 Childhood Cancer Prevention
Report confirms, childhood cancer incidence rates, the
number of new cases per 1,000 children, have steadily increased over the last
few decades across all racial/ethnic groups. Cancer is now responsible for more
than half of all childhood and
teenage deaths, making this study all the more urgent.
Oliver's
family may never know exactly what led to the cancer that took his life. But
the study they've helped to launch can identify the environmental contributors
to cancer and other diseases – and that knowledge can inform policies and practices
to better protect families from toxic products and pollution.
If
you're interested in participating in the study, please sign up at https://thereasonswhy.us/ ;
if you have any questions about involvement, please contact Simon Strong
at simon@thereasonswhy.us.
Jennifer
Sass is a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council; Nsedu Obot
Witherspoon is the executive director of the Children's Environmental Health
Network; Dr. Philip Landrigan is director of the Program for Global Public
Health and the Common Good, director of the Global Observatory on Pollution and
Health, a biology professor at Boston College; and Simon Strong is founder and
executive director of TheReasonsWhyUs.
