RT Book, Section
A1 Etzel, Ruth A.
A2 Kline, Mark W.
SR Print(0)
ID 1182916071
T1 Environmental Pediatrics
T2 Rudolph's Pediatrics, 23e
YR 2018
FD 2018
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9781259588594
LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1182916071
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  Great  Smog  of  1952  in  London.  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  (called  Minamata  disease).  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.