Using fossil fuel is increasing multiple health and developmental harms in children: study

What was an assumed fact till yesterday was confirmed by Professor Frederica Perera. The director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH), Professor Perera, said, that children are the most affected of the vast amount of fossil fuels we are using.

In a recent research by Perera, using fossil fuel is the ‘single most important action’ to improve the health of children living worldwide. A cease in using vast amounts of fossil fuels is proportionate to increased air pollution, leading children suffering from asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and developmental problems that lower IQ.

The study, Environmental Health Perspectives by Professor Frederica Perera therefore has very explicitly termed that ‘our addiction to fossil fuels’ would result into fewer number of premature babies and children born with a low birth weight. “Fossil fuel combustion inflicts a multitude of serious health and developmental harms in children through its emissions of toxic particles and gases and carbon dioxide, a pollutant that is a major driver of climate change,” said the study by Perera.

He also added that newborns, fetus and old, especially from the poorer countries, are the most vulnerable. The economically backward countries are also the prime fossil fuels user compared to the developing and developed countries. Therefore formation of a ‘child centered air pollution and energy policy’ is somehow the best option for countries to offer a better future to the future generation.

“The developing foetus and young child are more biologically and psychologically vulnerable than adults to the many adverse effects of toxic air pollutants and physical trauma, psychosocial stress, nutritional deprivation, infectious agents, and heat waves associated with climate change from fossil fuel combustion,” the study added.

Following the World Health Organization’s study from 2006 that said that children are the most ‘exposed’ to air pollution compared to adults, Perera’s study quite said the same thing, saying that the womb and the early years are the most susceptible and is likely to get affected.

According to the World Health Organisation, as many as 4.3 million people died worldwide due to indoor air pollution resulting from coal, wood and other solid fuel fires. the styudy by professor Perera, however, have clearly noted that burning fossil fuels include emissions of particulate matter (PM), black carbon, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), mercury, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon monoxide (CO)- all follow-on into health impacts being ‘strong respiratory irritant’.  

Again, children having the immature immune system are more likely to suffer from cholera and other diarrheal diseases and other diseases contaminated from air and water.