Healthy Air, Healthy Brains: Advancing Air Pollution Policy to Protect Children’s Health

摘要

Evidence is growing on the adverse neurodevelopmental effects of exposure to combustion-related air pollution. Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neurodevelopmental Risks), a unique collaboration of leading scientists, health professionals, and children’s and environmental health advocates, has identified combustion-related air pollutants as critical targets for action to protect healthy brain development. We present policy recommendations for maintaining and strengthening federal environmental health protections, advancing state and local actions, and supporting scientific research to inform effective strategies for reducing children’s exposures to combustion-related air pollution. Such actions not only would improve children’s neurological development but also would have the important co-benefit of climate change mitigation and further improvements in other health conditions. Children are exposed prenatally and in early childhood to multiple environmental stressors that can adversely affect their cognitive abilities, academic performance and consequent educational trajectories, adult health, wealth, and social status. 1,2 Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neurodevelopmental Risks), a unique collaboration of leading scientists, health professionals, and children’s and environmental health advocates, points to growing scientific evidence linking exposure to toxic chemicals during early brain development with brain disorders and calls on individuals, industries, and policymakers to reduce these exposures. 3 Developmental disabilities, such as learning disabilities, developmental delays, autism, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), affect one in six children in the United States, and the rate of these disorders is rising. 4 The estimated annual cost (medical care, lost economic productivity) of environmentally mediated neurodevelopmental disorders in US children is $74.3 billion. 5 Evidence linking combustion-related air pollution with adverse neurodevelopment is mounting. Sources of these pollutants include fossil fuel burning for power generation and transportation, wildfires, and burning of agricultural waste. Project TENDR identified these air pollutants—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter (PMsub2.5/sub, including ultrafine particulate matter [UFP]; ≤?100 nm), and other pollutants for which nitrogen dioxide and PMsub2.5/sub are markers—as exemplary targets for action. The purpose of this commentary is to present Project TENDR’s recommendations to reduce combustion-related air pollutant emissions to protect healthy brain development.