Chemical Wastes, Children's Health, and the Superfund Basic Research Program Philip J. Landrigan,1 William A. Suk,2 and Robert W. Amler3 1Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA
2Division of Environmental Research and Training, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA
3Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Abstract Three to 4 million children and adolescents in the United States live within 1 mile of a federally designated Superfund hazardous waste disposal site and are at risk of exposure to chemical toxicants released from these sites into air, groundwater, surface water, and surrounding communities. Because of their patterns of exposure and their biological vulnerability, children are uniquely susceptible to health injury resulting from exposures to chemical toxicants in the environment. The Superfund Basic Research Program, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and directed by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is extremely well positioned to organize multidisciplinary research that will assess patterns of children's exposures to hazardous chemicals from hazardous waste disposal sites ; quantify children's vulnerability to environmental toxicants ; assess causal associations between environmental exposures and pediatric disease ; and eluciudate the mechanisms of environmetal disease in children at the cellular and molecular level. Key words: environmental health, pediatric environmental disease, Superfund. Environ Health Perspect 107:423-427 (1999) . [Online 20 April 1999] http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1999/107p423-427landrigan/ abstract.html Address correspondence to P.J. Landrigan, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1057, New York, NY 10029-6574 USA. Telephone: (212) 241-4804. Fax: (212) 996-0407. E-mail: plandrigan@smtplink.mssm.edu The authors acknowledge the generous assistance of S. Carroll, M.M. Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and B.E. Anderson and C. Thompson, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Received 16 July 1998 ; accepted 22 October 1998. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML format. |