Tag Archives: pediatrics

More Parents Are Refusing to Vaccinate Their Kids—But Not for the Reason You Think

by KimberSeppelt Posted on August 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Anti-vax parents are on the rise.

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new reports and recommendations concerning parents refusing to immunize their kids against deadly diseases. Between 2006 and 2013, the percentage of pediatricians that had encountered a parent refusing a vaccine went from about 75 percent to 87 percent.

Vaccination will prevent around 322 million illnesses among children born between 1994 and 2013, the researchers write. Yet recent years have seen a loud, high-profile resistance to vaccines. The increase in unvaccinated kids has contributed to a return of dangerous diseases like measles and whooping cough.

Though all states require vaccinations, 18 allow parents to opt their kids out based on their personal beliefs. The AAP’s new recommendations include a plea to states to get rid of nonmedical exemptions to vaccination.

For the first time, AAP said it supports doctors who choose to ban anti-vax parents from their practice. “The decision to dismiss a family who continues to refuse immunization is not one that should be made lightly, nor should it be made without considering and respecting the reasons for the parents’ point of view,” the report says. “Nevertheless, the individual pediatrician may consider dismissal of families who refuse vaccination as an acceptable option.”

In the past, anti-vaccination campaigns have stirred irrational fears (based on disproven, fraudulent research) that vaccines cause autism. But that’s not what’s driving the trend now, says Catherine Hough-Telford, lead author on the study. Instead, more and more parents simply believe that vaccines are unnecessary.

“The parents who are making decisions about vaccines today have never lived through measles outbreaks or children dying of pertussis or polio,” Hough-Telford said. “They’ve never seen these illnesses firsthand.” It’s important to vaccinate as many people as possible, doctors say, in order to create “herd immunity” by limiting the infected population so vulnerable groups like infants and the elderly are less likely to be exposed.

The survey also found parents decide to delay or skip vaccinations for a variety of other reasons, most commonly concerns over child discomfort and harming the child’s immune system.

Here are some of the key numbers from the report:

In 2006, around 75 percent of pediatricians said they encountered a parent refusing to vaccinate their child. By 2013, that number had risen to 87 percent.
Pediatricians estimated in 2006 an average of 4.5 percent of parents in their practice refused one vaccine, compared to 8.6 percent in 2013. The average number of parents that refused all vaccines went from 2.1 to 3.3 percent.
In 2013, around 73 percent of pediatricians encountered parents that refused vaccines because they felt they were unnecessary, compared to 63.4 percent in 2006.
In 2013, 87.6 percent of pediatricians had a parental request to delay at least one vaccine (the 2006 study did not ask about delays). Mainstream doctors consider PDF delays a threat to herd immunity.
Fewer pediatricians encountered concerns over autism in 2013 (64.3 percent) than 2006 (74.2 percent).
More doctors are sending anti-vax patients away: In 2006, 6.1 percent of pediatricians would “always” dismiss patients that refused vaccines, compared 11.7 percent in 2013.
Some good news: Of those that initially refused vaccines but were given educational materials by their pediatrician, 31.9 percent changed their mind in 2006, and 34.4 percent changed their mind in 2013.
In 2013, 9.2 percent of pediatricians couldn’t convince any anti-vax parents with additional education.

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More Parents Are Refusing to Vaccinate Their Kids—But Not for the Reason You Think

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We’re Eating Less Meat—But Using More Antibiotics on Farms Than Ever

by GeorgettaEmmons Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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The meat industry’s massive appetite for antibiotics just keeps growing. That’s the takeaway from the Food and Drug Administration’s latest annual assessment of the issue, which found that agricultural use of “medically important” antibiotics—the ones that are prescribed to people when they fall ill—grew a startling 23 percent between 2009 and 2014. Over the same period, the total number of cows and pigs raised on US farms actually fell a bit, and the number of chickens held steady. What that’s telling us is that US meat production got dramatically more antibiotic-dependent over that period.

Even more disheartening, medically important antibiotic use crept up 3 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year—despite the FDA’s effort to convince the industry to voluntarily ramp down reliance on such crucial medicines. True, the FDA’s policy, which was first released in 2012, contained a “three-year time frame for voluntary phase-in.” One might have hoped, however, that by 2014, the needle would point downward, not implacably upward.

Note, too, that the last time the FDA saw fit to release numbers on human antibiotic use, in 2011, the total stood at about 3.3 million kilograms. The chart below tells us that farms now using nearly 9.5 million kilograms—nearly three times as much. The news comes in the wake of warnings from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control that the meat industry’s drug habit contributes to a growing crisis in antibiotic-resistant pathogens that kill 23,000 people each year in the United States and 700,000 globally. Then there was the recent news that in China—which has patterned its meat industry on the antibiotic-ravenous US model—a strain of E. coli had evolved on hog farms that can resist a potent antibiotic called colistin, considered a last resort for pathogens that can resist all other drugs.

Here are the numbers:

FDA

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We’re Eating Less Meat—But Using More Antibiotics on Farms Than Ever

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The Meat Industry Is Killing Kids, Say Pediatricians

by HarrisLilly775 Posted on November 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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According to the National Pork Producers Coalition, the way the meat industry currently uses antibiotics is no problem. “Existing FDA regulations are increasingly strict and provide adequate safeguards against antibiotic resistance,” the group insists on its website.

But Jerome Paulson and Theoklis Zaoutis disagree. Pediatricians who serve on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health, they have published a blunt report in the journal Pediatrics, arguing that systemic overuse of antibiotics in livestock production is a key driver of the resistance crisis, which, they show, sickens 2 million Americans every year, kills 23,000, and runs up an annual healthcare bill of $21 billion annually.

With their developing immune systems, children are particularly vulnerable—salmonella alone causes more then 120,000 illnesses, 44,000 physician visits, 4600 hospitalizations, and 38 deaths annually among kids younger than five, the authors report.

They point out that US livestock producers uses a staggering 32.2 million pounds of antibiotics in 2012 (the last year for which data exist), more than four times the amount used to treat people. Fully 60 percent of the those farm-dispensed drugs “are considered to be important in human medicine,” they add. This annual bombardment of farm antibiotics, they show, kills susceptible bacteria and allows resistant ones to proliferate. Of the Salmonella that commonly show up in the US meat supply, 5 percent are are resistant to 5 or more classes of antibiotic drugs—and 3 percent can withstand ceftriaxone, the “first-line therapy for salmonellosis in pediatrics,” the authors note.

Paulson and Zaoutis then run through the various ways these superbugs move off of farms and threaten people. “Increasingly, food animals are raised in large numbers under close confinement, transported in large groups to slaughter, and processed very rapidly,” they write. “These conditions can cause increased bacterial shedding and contamination of hide, carcass, and meat with fecal bacteria.” Resistant bacteria can also escape the farm through farmers, farm workers, and farm families, and casual visitors, who then can spread the germs throughout the communities. Then there’s the vast concentrations of manure from these facilities, which “can contaminate foods when manure containing resistant organisms is applied to agricultural soils and the organisms are then present in farm runoff.”

They end with a critique of what those pork producers claim are “increasingly strict” FDA rules on farm antibiotic use. Currently, the rules allow farmers to use antibiotics not only to treat to disease but also “prevent” it—a loophole that, as I and others have shown, allows meat producers to maintain current practices. That practice “can harm public health, including child health, through the promotion of resistance,” the authors warm. Who are you going to believe—the folks charged with keeping your kids healthy, or the ones charged with profitably churning out billions of meat animals each year?

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The Meat Industry Is Killing Kids, Say Pediatricians

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Will This Be the Nail in the Coffin of Toxic Flame Retardants?

by CarriWinning Posted on April 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Flame retardant chemicals are in millions of products, from mattresses and couches to car seats to electronics. In 2011, Environmental Science & Technology published a study that found that 80 percent of 100 randomly tested children’s products were covered in fire-retardant chemical. But there’s a growing consensus that these chemicals don’t belong in our homes: They’ve been linked to cancer, hormone deficiencies, and neurological and developmental problems.

Between 2009 and 2013, the chemical industry agreed to phase out a particularly harmful flame retardant known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)—but further research from scientists at the Environmental Working Group and Duke University has found that manufacturers are simply replacing PBDEs with just-as-toxic, structurally similar chemicals.

Now, a diverse group of organizations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the International Association of Fire Fighters, and the Consumer Federation of America—is calling for the ban of any children’s products, furniture, mattresses and electronics that have traces of any of the chemicals associated with flame retardants.

“It’s time to stop moving from one harmful flame retardant to its chemical cousin,” said Arlene Blum, founder and executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, in a statement about the petition that she and nine other organizations filed with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

If the ban catches on, it will come as a major blow to the chemical manufacturers, who, for decades, have been downplaying concerns about flame retardants’ toxicity. The companies’ strategies have been compared to those used by Big Tobacco: They cleverly confuse the public into believing scientific findings are a matter of opinion and up for debate.

The similarities between the two industries shouldn’t come as a surprise, given their interconnected past. In an explosive 2012 investigative series, the Chicago Tribune reported that tobacco companies played a major role in the promotion of flame retardants. After a slew of apartment fires caused by lit cigarettes, the tobacco companies looked for a scapegoat and found one in furniture. Suddenly the media was focusing on flammable dangers we live around everyday—instead of the actual cause of many of these household fires: cigarettes.

The chemical companies, too, quickly realized how lucrative fire retardants could be—in 2012, the value of the market for the chemicals was estimated at $5.1 billion. Part of the reason for the companies’ success was a subtle astroturf campaign: In 2007, Albemarle Corporation, a leading flame retardant manufacturer, teamed up with two other chemical conglomerates to create Citizens for Fire Safety, an organization that advocates for increased use of flame retardants. The organization, which marketed itself as a neutral source of information for consumers, folded in 2012 after the Tribune exposed the real players involved.

Another problem with flame retardants: It’s not even clear that they work. According to the Tribune, in 2009 government scientists lit two couches on fire, one with fire retardant chemicals in its foam and one with out them. Within four minutes “both were engulfed in flames.”

“We did not find flame retardants in foam to provide any significant protection,” Dale Ray, a project manager with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and overseer of the study told the Tribune.

Despite this finding, flame retardants have stuck around—in products, and in people’s bodies. The chemicals, considered persistent organic pollutants, show up in dust particles, which we (and our food) absorb. Particularly vulnerable groups are firefighters, who are exposed to immense doses when extinguishing fires in products that are covered in the chemicals, and children, who are exposed when they play on the floor near dust and stick their hands in their mouths.

Last year, scientists from Duke University and the Environmental Working Group tested the urine of 22 mothers and 26 children. All the samples came back positive for exposure to Tris(1,3-dichloroisopropyl)phosphate (TDCIPP), one of the fire retardant chemicals that was developed to replace PBDEs. The children’s average TDCIPP concentration levels were fives times that of the mothers. TDCIPP caused the growth of tumors when tested on animals and has been labeled as carcinogenic by the state of California under Proposition 65.

“The science is in on this class of flame retardant chemicals,” said Nancie Payne, president of the Learning Disabilities Association of America, which also signed the Consumer Product Safety Commission petition. “They harm brain development, and have no business being in consumer goods.”

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Will This Be the Nail in the Coffin of Toxic Flame Retardants?

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Study: You Can’t Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind

by HelaineM45 Posted on March 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Vaccine denial is dangerous. We know this for many reasons, but just consider one of them: In California in 2010, 10 children died in a whooping cough outbreak that was later linked, in part, to the presence of 39 separate clusters of unvaccinated children in the state. It’s that simple: When too many children go unvaccinated, vaccine-preventable diseases spread more easily, and sometimes children die. Nonetheless, as scientifically unfounded fears about childhood vaccines causing autism have proliferated over the past decade or more, a minority of parents are turning to “personal belief exemptions,” so-called “alternative vaccine schedules,” and other ways to dodge or delay vaccinating their kids.

So as a rational person, you might think it would be of the utmost importance to try to talk some sense into these people. But there’s a problem: According to a major new study in the journal Pediatrics, trying to do so may actually make the problem worse. The paper tested the effectiveness of four separate pro-vaccine messages, three of which were based very closely on how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself talks about vaccines. The results can only be called grim: Not a single one of the messages was successful when it came to increasing parents’ professed intent to vaccinate their children. And in several cases the messages actually backfired, either increasing the ill-founded belief that vaccines cause autism or even, in one case, apparently reducing parents’ intent to vaccinate.

Click here for more on vaccine-dodging parents.

The study, by political scientist Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College* and three colleagues, adds to a large body of frustrating research on how hard it is to correct false information and get people to accept indisputable facts. Nyhan and one of his coauthors, Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, are actually the coauthors of a much discussed previous study showing that when politically conservative test subjects read a fake newspaper article containing a quotation of George W. Bush asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, followed by a factual correction stating that this was not actually true, they believed Bush’s falsehood more strongly afterwards—an outcome that Nyhan and Reifler dubbed a “backfire effect.”

Unfortunately, the vaccine issue is prime terrain for such biased and motivated reasoning; recent research even suggests that a conspiratorial, paranoid mindset prevails among some vaccine rejectionists. To try to figure out how to persuade them, in the new study researchers surveyed a representative sample of 1,759 Americans with at least one child living in their home. A first phase of the study determined their beliefs about vaccines; then, in a follow-up, respondents were asked to consider one of four messages (or a control message) about vaccine effectiveness and the importance of kids getting the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.

The first message, dubbed “Autism correction,” was a factual, science-heavy correction of false claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism, assuring parents that the vaccine is “safe and effective” and citing multiple studies that disprove claims of an autism link. The second message, dubbed “Disease risks,” simply listed the many risks of contracting the measles, the mumps, or rubella, describing the nasty complications that can come with these diseases. The third message, dubbed “Disease narrative,” told a “true story” about a 10-month-old whose temperature shot up to a terrifying 106 degrees after he contracted measles from another child in a pediatrician’s waiting room.

Child with measles CDC/llinois Department of Public Health

All three of these messages are closely based on messages (here, here, and here) that appear on the CDC website. And then there was a final message that was not directly based on CDC communications, dubbed “Disease images.” In this case, as a way of emphasizing the importance of vaccines, test subjects were asked to examine three fairly disturbing images of children afflicted with measles, mumps, and rubella. One of those images used is at right.

The results showed that by far, the least successful messages were “Disease narrative” and “Disease images.” Hearing the frightening narrative actually increased respondents’ likelihood of thinking that getting the MMR vaccine will cause serious side effects, from 7.7 percent to 13.8 percent. Similarly, looking at the disturbing images increased test subjects’ belief that vaccines cause autism. In other words, both of these messages backfired.

Why did that happen? Dartmouth’s Nyhan isn’t sure, but he comments that “if people read about or see sick children, it may be easier to imagine other kinds of health risks to children, including possibly side effects of vaccines that are actually quite rare.” (When it comes to side effects, Nyhan is referring not to autism but to the small minority of cases in which vaccines cause adverse reactions.)

The two more straightforward text-only messages, “Austism correction” and “Disease risks,” had more mixed effects. “Disease risks” didn’t cause any harm, but it didn’t really produce any benefits either.

As for “Autism correction,” it actually worked, among survey respondents as a whole, to somewhat reduce belief in the falsehood that vaccines cause autism. But at the same time, the message had an unexpected negative effect, decreasing the percentage of parents saying that they would be likely to vaccinate their children.

Looking more closely, the researchers found that this occurred because of a strong backfire effect among the minority of test subjects who were the most distrustful of vaccines. In this group, the likelihood of saying they would give their kids the MMR vaccine decreased to 45 percent (versus 70 percent in the control group) after they received factual, scientific information debunking the vaccines-autism link. Indeed, the study therefore concluded that “no intervention increased intent to vaccinate among parents who are the least favorable toward vaccines.”

Nyhan carefully emphasizes that the study cannot say anything about the effectiveness of other possible messages beyond the ones that were tested. So there may be winners out there that simply weren’t in the experiment—although as Nyhan added, “I don’t have a good candidate.” In any event, given results like these, any new messages ought to be tested as well.

“I don’t think our results imply that they shouldn’t communicate why vaccines are a good idea,” adds Nyhan. “But they do suggest that we should be more careful to test the messages that we use, and to question the intuition that countering misinformation is likely to be the most effective strategy.”

Finally, Nyhan adds that in order to protect public health by encouraging widespread vaccinations, public communication efforts aren’t the only tools at our disposal. “Other policy measures might be more effective,” he notes. For instance, recently we reported on how easy it is for parents to dodge getting their kids vaccinated in some states; in some cases, it requires little more than a onetime signature on a form. Tightening these policies might be considerably more helpful than trying to win hearts and minds. That wasn’t really working out anyway, and thanks to the new study, we now know that vaccine deniers’ imperviousness to facts may be a key part of the reason why.

* This article previously referred to Dartmouth College as Dartmouth University. We regret the error.

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Study: You Can’t Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind

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At Least 194 Children Have Been Shot to Death Since Newtown.

by tunwoelx7 Posted on December 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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You’ve heard this story before, the one that played out again the week of Thanksgiving—this time in Lakeland, Florida—where 2-year-old Taj Ayesh got his little hands on his father’s loaded pistol, pulled the trigger, and crumpled to the ground. You may have heard about 9-year-old Daniel Wiley, who was playing outside his house in Harrisburg, Texas, when a 13-year-old mishandled an unsecured shotgun, blasting Wiley in the face. You may also have heard about 2-year-old Camryn Shultz of Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, whose embittered father put a bullet in her head before turning the gun on himself. Maybe you didn’t hear about the case in which a child shot others and then committed suicide, but that also happened this year. Twice.

A year after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mother Jones has analyzed the subsequent deaths of 194 children ages 12 and under who were reported in news accounts to have died in gun accidents, homicides, and suicides. They are spread across 43 states, from inner cities to tiny rural towns.

Following Sandy Hook, the National Rifle Association and its allies argued that arming more adults is the solution to protecting children, be it from deranged mass shooters or from home invaders. But the data we collected stands as a stark rejoinder to that view:

127 of the children died from gunshots in their own homes, while dozens more died in the homes of friends, neighbors, and relatives.
72 of the young victims either pulled the trigger themselves or were shot dead by another kid.
In those 72 cases, only 4 adults have been held criminally liable.
At least 52 deaths involved a child handling a gun left unsecured.

Additional findings include:

60 children died at the hands of their own parents, 50 of them in homicides.
The average age of the victims was 6 years old.
More than two-thirds of the victims were boys, as were more than three-quarters of the kids who pulled the trigger.
The problem was worst over the past year in the South, which saw at least 92 child gun deaths, followed by the Midwest (44), the West (38), and the East (20).

Our investigation drew on hundreds of local and national news reports. In some cases specific details remain unclear—often these tragedies are just a blip on the media’s radar. As with previous reports in our ongoing investigation of gun violence, Mother Jones has published all the data we collected in downloadable spreadsheet form. (For an ongoing tally of reported gun deaths, see this Slate project.)

As I reported in May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that over the last decade an average of about 200 children ages 12 and under died from guns every year. But those numbers don’t capture the full scope of the problem, due to inconsistencies in how states report shootings, and because the gun lobby long ago helped kill off federal funding for gun violence research. Our media-based analysis of child gun deaths also understates the problem, as numerous such killings likely never appear in the news. New research by two Boston surgeons drawing on pediatric records suggests that the real toll is higher: They’ve found about 500 deaths of children and teens per year, and an additional 7,500 hospitalizations from gunshot wounds.

“It’s almost a routine problem in pediatric practice,” says Dr. Judith Palfrey, a former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics who holds positions at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. Palfrey herself (who is not involved with the above study) lost a 12-year-old patient she was close with to gun violence, she told me.

No other affluent society has this problem to such an extreme. According to a recent study by the Children’s Defense Fund, the gun death rate for children and teens in the US is four times greater than in Canada, the country with the next highest rate, and 65 times greater than in Germany and Britain.

The pediatric community has been focused on elevating the issue. Public health researchers have found that 43 percent of homes with guns and kids contain at least one unlocked firearm. One study found that a third of 8- to 12-year-old boys who came across an unlocked handgun picked it up and pulled the trigger. On Tuesday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a video emphasizing physicians’ role in keeping children safe from gun violence. The academy also issued specific recommendations this fall, including making sure firearms have trigger locks and storing them unloaded and under lock and key.

State legislators around the country have sought to require such precautions for gun owners, but the gun lobby has fought them vigorously. The NRA and other groups downplay the dangers firearms pose to children—in part by citing deficient federal data.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, research has shown that when doctors consult with their patients about the risk of keeping firearms in a home, it leads to “significantly higher rates” of handgun removal or safe storage practices. Here, too, the NRA has done battle: It backed the so-called “Docs vs. Glocks” law passed in Florida in 2011, which forbid doctors from asking patients about firearms.

That law may have come with a price: Among the 194 child gun deaths we analyzed, 17 took place in Florida. Seven were accidents, including three involving unsecured weapons in homes. “The children were covered in blood,” a shaken witness told a reporter after toddlers in a Lake City home played with a gun and fatally shot an 11-year-old boy in the neck.

Florida’s tally was second only to that of Texas, which saw 19 children killed over the last year. By comparison, the other two of the four most populous states, California and New York, saw 11 and 3 deaths, respectively. Already known for strict gun regulations, California and New York both passed additional restrictions after Sandy Hook. Texas, meanwhile, enacted 10 new laws deregulating guns, including weakening safety training requirements for concealed-carry permit holders and blocking universities and local governments from restricting firearms. Florida tightened mental health controls this year—one of 15 states to do so—but has otherwise operated as a de facto laboratory for permissive gun laws, including its Stand Your Ground statute made famous by the Trayvon Martin case.

In scores of the cases we studied, the type of weapon involved was either unknown to law enforcement authorities or not specified in news reports. But at least 76 involved a handgun, while another 34 involved long guns. (Semi-automatic handguns are also the most common weapon used in mass shootings.)

Often when kids are killed in gun accidents, public outrage focuses on the parents. But legal repercussions are another matter: While charges may be pending in some of the 84 accidental cases, we found only 9 in which a parent or adult guardian has been held criminally liable. And in 72 cases in which a child or teen pulled the trigger, only four adults have been convicted. According to the nonpartisan Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks state regulations closely, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have strong laws imposing criminal liability for negligent storage of guns with respect to children. (Florida, Texas, and California are among the 14.)

What happened a year ago in Newtown is still in some ways hard to fathom. The nation mourns again for the victims and families. But as Palfrey also puts it, “Newtown concentrated the horror in one place.” Whether by malice or tragic mistake, the day-to-day toll of children dying from guns goes on.

The data from our investigation can be viewed in two ways. See an interactive photo gallery of the 194 victims:

See the full data set behind the investigation in spreadsheet form:

Also see our award-winning investigation, America Under the Gun: A Special Report on the Rise of Mass Shootings.

Research contributed by Maggie Caldwell, Nina Liss-Schultz, and AJ Vicens. Charts produced by Jaeah Lee. Video produced by Brett Brownell.

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At Least 194 Children Have Been Shot to Death Since Newtown.

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America’s kids eating healthier, getting fitter

by Lubao2pzs Posted on September 17, 2013

America’s kids eating healthier, getting fitter

By

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Yay for exercise and healthy food.

Here’s news as sweet as a fistful of blueberries: American kids aged 11 to 16 were eating more fruit and vegetables in 2009 than those who came before them just eight years earlier, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Kids are also cutting back on sweets and sugary drinks, eating breakfast more regularly, spending more time exercising, and spending less time in front of the television, the study found:

PediatricsClick to embiggen.

The following graph shows the modest rise in the number of days per week that American kids engaged in physical activity (PA) and the decline in the hours per day that they sat in front of the television:

PediatricsClick to embiggen.

These healthier habits have begun making a difference.

The average body mass index of thousands of kids studied increased between 2001 and 2005, then started falling between 2005 and 2009. That’s in line with the results of other studies, which have shown a plateau in childhood obesity rates. (Though as we told you last week, America’s most obese kids, primarily children of poor black and Hispanic parents, continue to get fatter.)

“Over the previous decades, the pattern had been that kids were getting less physical activity, and it’s been very hard to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption,” Ronald Iannotti, coauthor of the study and chairman of the department of exercise and health sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, told USA Today. “We’ve got a long way to go, but the good news is that those are increasing.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

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America’s kids eating healthier, getting fitter

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American kids still pretty lead-poisoned

by Aaron Dempsey Posted on April 5, 2013

American kids still pretty lead-poisoned

By Susie Cagle

stevendepolo

Lead-free gasoline: It’s pretty great, as far as gasoline-without-extra-toxins goes. But even though we’ve made great strides in reducing lead pollution over the last few decades, America’s still full of the stuff.

More than half a million American children under 5, or 1 in 38 young kids, have low-grade lead poisoning, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The surveys from 2007 to 2010 showed an 8.6 percent decrease in childhood lead poisoning compared to 1999-2002.

Until last year, the CDC only tracked people with 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, considered the threshold for lead poisoning by the CDC, World Heath Organization, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. But five micrograms per deciliter is considered enough to potentially cause damage.

Those approximately 535,000 kids aren’t really a representative sample of American youth, though.

“Persistent differences between the mean [blood lead levels] of different racial/ethnic and income groups can be traced to differences in housing quality, environmental conditions, nutrition, and other factors,” the CDC said in a statement. In other words: This is way worse for poor kids of color who live in our urban sacrifice zones.

From the Associated Press:

Often, children who get lead poisoning live in old homes that are dilapidated or under renovation. They pick up paint chips or dust and put it in their mouth. Children have also picked up lead poisoning from soil contaminated by old leaded gasoline, from dust tracked in from industrial worksites, from tainted drinking water, and other sources.

Some have linked a reduction in environmental lead exposure to a reduction in violent crime nationwide over the last few decades. Regardless, I think we can all agree that we’d prefer lead-free kids. The CDC suggests that children can counteract high blood lead levels by increasing their iron and calcium intake. But wouldn’t a strong lead abatement effort  be even more effective?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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American kids still pretty lead-poisoned

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Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 13, 2012

Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

By Susie Cagle

You may not be at all surprised to learn that pesticides are bad for us. No, but, like, really bad.

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A couple of months ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned about the effects of pesticides on kids. Today’s kids have grown up with a new normal of pesticide-laden food and increased food allergies (up 18 percent in the U.S. between 1997 and 2007). According to a new study, those two things might be connected. From Mother Earth News:

The study reported that high levels of dichlorophenols, a chemical used in pesticides and to chlorinate water, when found in the human body, are associated with food allergies.

“Our research shows that high levels of dichlorophenol-containing pesticides can possibly weaken food tolerance in some people, causing food allergy,” said allergist Elina Jerschow, M.D., M.Sc., ACAAI fellow and lead study author. “This chemical is commonly found in pesticides used by farmers and consumer insect and weed control products, as well as tap water …

“Previous studies have shown that both food allergies and environmental pollution are increasing in the United States,” said Dr. Jerschow. “The results of our study suggest these two trends might be linked, and that increased use of pesticides and other chemicals is associated with a higher prevalence of food allergies.”

Eat all the organic apples you want, but there’s no escaping pesticides. The New York Times’ Mark Bittman had some strong words about that this week:

[T]he most striking non-event of the last year — decade, generation — is how asleep at the wheel we have all been regarding pesticides. Because every human tested is found to have pesticides in his or her body fat. And because pesticides are found in nearly every stream in the United States, over 90 percent of wells, and — in urban and agricultural areas — over half the groundwater. So Department of Agriculture data show that the average American is exposed to 10 or more pesticides every day, via diet and drinking water.

This shouldn’t be surprising: pesticide drift is a term used to describe the phenomenon by which almost all pesticides — 95 to 98 percent is the number I’ve seen — wind up on or in something other than their intended target. (This means, of course, that in order to be effective more pesticides must be used than would be necessary if targeting were more accurate.)

Much damage has been done, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

It sure is — and not just for humans. R.I.P. bees.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Original article: 

Pesticide chemicals linked to food allergies

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