The Unique Vulnerabilities of Children to Environmental Hazards

Abstract

Children in their first 1000 days of life are extraordinarily vulnerable to environmental hazards, especially in their specific settings which are predominantly the intrauterine and domestic environment. Their vulnerabilities can be thus categorised in terms of their developmental phases, environmental settings, and environmental hazards within those settings that characterise their environmental exposures. While we generally have a good understanding of environmental, chemical, physical, and infectious hazards in the different environments of a child and their parents, rapidly intensifying in recent times, global environmental and demographic drivers such as climate change, population growth, urbanisation, antimicrobial resistance, prolific production use of chemicals, emerging infectious diseases, and pollution caused by inadequate waste management, thus exacerbating complexological and anthropogenic services, can increase environmental hazard potential for a very young child if not exposures to well-known as well as emerging hazards. Parental behaviour and socio-economic status, etc. are optimally managed.