Environmental Justice for Children of the Poor in Developing Countries: Can We Bring It About?

Introduction

The United States is a benefactor of a global economy that has improved the financial status of its own blue-collar workers, professionals and "high-tech" entrepreneurs. It has benefited from a global communication network including television, e-mail, telephone and air travel that has bonded many of its people to others throughout the world. In addition, American investigators have often studied people of other countries in an attempt to determine correlations between disease and environmental exposure, even between treatment and cure. Such studies frequently help in understanding and treating diseases occurring in the United States as well as elsewhere. All this occurs regardless of political beliefs, language and the travails of the less fortunate. With so many benefits resulting from US interactions with other countries, we might ask whether we can help solve some problems of developing countries just as our research in those countries has helped solve some US problems.

One problem that I believe is fixable is environmental injustice involving children of the poor. This belief has evolved from experiences during studies on the effects of human exposure to arsenic-containing compounds that my research group at The University of Arizona has conducted in Chile, [1] the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia, [2] Romania [3] and the Guizhou Province of the People's Republic of China. All these studies were performed at the invitation of the provincial or central government of the countries involved and with the permission of the US Department of State.

If we accept the premise that the future of a country, a city, a family, perhaps even the world depends on its children, then we all should try to protect them regardless of where they live. The exposure of children to environmental toxins and the resulting illness(es) should be the concern of all. Pesticides are one example. Landrigan et al [4] have emphasized that early exposure of growing children to pesticides can cause not only childhood diseases but also diseases of later life such as cancers, reproductive disorders, immune system disorders and …