Climate Change Will Hit Kids Hardest

Report Urges Pediatricians to Prepare

Children are more likely than adults to be harmed by the effects of global warming, and the medical community needs to do more to research, plan for and work to prevent those impacts, according to news from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

In its latest report, "Global Climate Change and Children's Health," the AAP advises pediatricians to be aware of the increased health threats, both direct and indirect, that climate change poses for children.

"Because of their physical, physiologic and cognitive immaturity, children are often most vulnerable to adverse health effects from environmental hazards," writes Katherine M. Shea, who authored the report with the AAP's Committee on Environmental Health. "As the climate changes, environmental hazards will change and often increase, and children are likely to suffer disproportionately from these changes."

Threats range from a greater likelihood of natural disasters; increased risk of diarrhea, water-borne and food-borne illnesses, which tend to occur more frequently when temperatures and rainfall rise; rising rates of vector-borne diseases (illnesses spread by insect or other organisms) like malaria, West Nile virus, Lyme disease and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome; and increased levels of pollution and allergens, which affect children disproportionately because their lungs are still developing and they breathe at higher rates than adults.

Natural disasters already affected some 66.5 million children a year between 1990 and 2000, while contaminated water causes diarrhea that annually kills about 1.62 million children under the age of five, according to the report.