A study published in Health Affairs has determined that poor childhood health caused by environmental factors costs the United States $76.6 billion per year. Air pollution and exposure to toxic chemicals found in air, food, water, soil, and homes were cited as the primary contributing environmental factors.
This is a dramatic increase over prior years and represents 3.5% of children´s health care costs. The study was lead by Leonardo Trasande of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Trasande´s focus was on environmentally-linked lead poisoning, childhood cancer, asthma, intellectual disability, autism, and attention deficit disorder. What he determined was that environmentally linked:
Lead poisoning costs $50.9 billion per year
Autism costs $7.9 billion per year
Intellectual disability costs $5.4 billion per year
Exposure to mercury (methyl mercury) costs $5.1 billion per year
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder costs $5.0 billion per year
Asthma cost $2.2 billion per year
Childhood cancer costs $95.0 million per year
"The thing about the health effects from environmental factors is that they are preventable," says Lourdes Salvador of MCS America, "Replacing toxic chemicals and products with safe ones tightly regulated by an independent regulatory agency would completely eliminate these illnesses and prevent so much pain and suffering."
For more articles on this topic, see: MCSA News.
Copyrighted 2011 Lourdes Salvador & MCS America
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