The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement Monday stating that climate change is a major threat to children's health. The group urged politicians and other pediatricians to work hand-in-hand in protecting children from health threats linked to climate change.
"Every child needs a safe and healthy environment and climate change is a rising public health threat to all children in this country and around the world," AAP President Dr. Sandra G. Hassink said in a press release. "Pediatricians have a unique and powerful voice in this conversation due to their knowledge of child health and disease and their role in ensuring the health of current and future children."
The detailed policy statement, entitled "Global Climate Change and Children's Health," enumerates how climate change affects children's health.
Extreme weather events and the increasing frequency of natural disasters brought about by changes in climate "directly threaten children with injury and death." They can cause trauma, stress and depression. Extreme weather events and natural disasters also threaten children's nutrition, as these affect the harvest and quality of crops.
Aside from effects, the number of illnesses and deaths caused by increasing heat has increased. AAP's report said that babies and high school athletes face the greatest risk for heat-related illness and cited that 9,237 high school athletes either get sick or die from heat every year.
The report also said that poor air quality could lead to increased incidences of asthma, while mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, West Nile virus, malaria and Chikungunya could become more widespread because of climate change.
The policy statement ends with recommendations on how the health and government sectors could help alleviate the effects of climate change on children's health.
"Failure to take prompt, substantive action would be an act of injustice to all children," the report said.
Some experts say that considering how climate change affects children helps drive a stronger point.
"I think it makes it more real to people," Dr. Perry Sheffield from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai told CBS News. "Sometimes it may be hard for people to relate to animals on other continents that they don't have a personal relationship with. But almost everyone knows a child who's asthmatic, so that can really drive it home."
The AAP policy statement was published in the online Oct. 26 issue of the journal Pediatrics.
