ABSTRACT
For more than half the world’s children, their health and often their lives are constantly threatened by environmental hazards – in their home and its surrounds, in the places where they play and socialize and, for working children, in their workplaces. The child crisis – the 40,000 child deaths that occur each day from malnutrition and disease and the 150 million children a year who survive with ill health and with their physical and mental development held back – has somehow become separated from much of the discussion about the world’s most serious environmental problems. Yet, it is pollutants or disease-causing agents (pathogens) in the child’s environment – in air, water, soils or food – and poor households’ inadequate access to natural resources (fresh water, food, fuel) which are the immediate causes of this child crisis. Given the importance of environmental factors to infant and child health (and survival), it is perhaps surprising that the relationship between children and the environment has not been given more attention. Environmental hazards also take a serious toll on the health of a high proportion of the world’s parents and this, in turn, makes it much more difficult for parents to provide their children with a safe, stable and stimulating environment.
