Environmental Toxicology: Children at Risk

Overview

This Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology chapter by Carroquino, Posada, and Landrigan synthesizes the foundational principles of pediatric environmental toxicology: critical developmental periods, dose-response relationships, vulnerable life stages from embryonic period through adolescence, and the empirical case for child-specific environmental health protection. Philip J. Landrigan is the founding director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai and the canonical U.S. authority on the pediatric environmental health framework that motivates child-vulnerable-population reasoning across the environmental-health and food-safety regulatory frameworks. The chapter is the foundational secondary reference for the case that infants and children warrant tighter regulatory protection than adults at any given environmental exposure.

Key conclusions

The chapter establishes the pediatric environmental toxicology framework: children are not small adults; specific developmental windows during embryonic, fetal, neonatal, infant, toddler, and adolescent life stages produce different susceptibilities to environmental toxicants; per-kilogram-body-weight exposure is systematically higher in children due to higher food and water intake per unit body weight; immature detoxification and elimination pathways amplify the systemic dose at any given environmental exposure. The chapter covers the major environmental toxicants relevant to children, including the heavy metals Pb, Cd, As, Hg, Mn, and Al, and frames the developmental-exposure-to-lifetime-outcome chain that motivates pediatric-targeted regulatory action.

Implications

• Certification: Foundational citing reference for HMTc child-vulnerable-population reasoning. Landrigan’s authoritative pediatric environmental health framework is the recurring justification for setting infant-and-toddler dietary heavy metal limits below adult-targeted reference values, and this chapter is the encyclopedia-level secondary synthesis of that framework.
• Courses: Standard reference for pediatric environmental toxicology teaching.
• App: Supports vulnerable-population flagging across all heavy metals in IandC product rows.

Wiki pages updated on ingest

• Lead
• Cadmium
• Arsenic
• Mercury
• Aluminum
• pediatric-environmental-toxicology

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