Children are highly vulnerable to health risks of a changing climate [sciencedaily.com]

Young children are far more vulnerable to climate-related disasters and the onus is on adults to provide the protection and care that children need. In a paper published in PLoS Medicine, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center set out some specific challenges associated with the impacts of climate change on the world's 2.3 billion children and suggest ways to address their under-prioritized needs.

"Children and adolescents are more vulnerable to climate change stemming from environmental pollution originating from human activity which is expected to increase the magnitude and frequency of extreme events like floods, droughts, and heatwaves and trigger humanitarian disasters," said Madeleine Thomson, PHD, research scholar in the Mailman School's Department of Environmental Health Sciences. "These emergencies enhance a wide range of environmental exposures that directly and indirectly affect children, but because of their anatomic, cognitive, immunologic, and psychologic differences, children and adolescents are more vulnerable to these adverse exposures than adults," noted Thomson, who is also a faculty member in the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia's Earth Institute and served as guest editor in PLOS Medicine's Special Issue on Climate Change and Health.

For example, because of their small surface to body ratio infants and children are particularly vulnerable to dehydration and heat stress. Additionally, children are more likely to be affected by respiratory disease, renal disease, electrolyte imbalance and fever during persistent hot episodes. Heat waves have also been shown to exacerbate allergens and air pollution which impact children more severely than adults because of their underdeveloped respiratory and immune systems and their relatively high rates of respiration.

[For more on this study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, go to https://www.sciencedaily.com/r.../08/180806151856.htm]