RT Book, Section
A1 Etzel, Ruth A.
A2 Rudolph, Colin D.
A2 Rudolph, Abraham M.
A2 Lister, George E.
A2 First, Lewis R.
A2 Gershon, Anne A.
SR Print(0)
ID 6728274
T1 Chapter 17. Environmental Pediatrics
T2 Rudolph's Pediatrics, 22e
YR 2011
FD 2011
PB The McGraw-Hill Companies
PP New York, NY
SN 978-0-07-149723-7
LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=6728274
RD 2024/04/19
AB It  is  only  in  the  last  50  years  that  diseases  linked  to  environmental  contamination  have  been  recognized  in  pediatrics.  Most  environmental  exposures  now  understood  to  be  harmful  to  children  were  initially  identified  as  a  result  of  acute  epidemics  of  illness  affecting  groups  of  people.  For  example,  polluted  outdoor  air  was  not  well  understood  to  be  unhealthy  until  the  London  Smog  of  1952.1  An  estimated  4000  people  died  from  exposures  to  the  very  heavy  air  pollution;  deaths  were  unusually  high  among  the  very  young  and  the  elderly.  This  led  to  the  development  of  the  first  laws  to  regulate  air  pollution.  Mercury  was  not  understood  to  be  harmful  until  an  epidemic  of  cerebral  palsy  occurred  among  infants  living  near  Minamata  Bay,  Japan,  in  the  1950s  (Minamata  disease).2  Between  1959  and  1972  in  Iraq,  seed  grain  treated  with  a  mercury  fungicide  was  accidentally  eaten  by  humans  instead  of  being  planted  in  the  fields,  and  thousands  of  Iraqi  people  developed  mercury  poisoning.3,4