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DiNapoli Allocates $200,000 Funding for Children’s Environmental Health Centers of Excellence in
New York State

NYS Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli recognized “Legislator of the Year” in October 2006.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine receives funding, expanding clinical services

New York State Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli announced the allocation of $200,000 from the 2006-07 State Budget to help establish a network of Children’s Environmental Health Centers across New York State. The funding will be distributed to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine along with five other designated centers to provide clinical care to children who have suffered toxic environmental exposures, educate health care providers and the public about environmental threats to children’s health, and organize disease prevention programs.

“Children today face environmental hazards we didn’t know about a few decades ago,” said DiNapoli. “By establishing the Children’s Environmental Health Centers of Excellence we are providing the tools needed to research and better understand how, and what type of, environmental factors are contributing to chronic diseases in children.”

Chronic diseases of environmental origin are an increasing problem in the children across New York State. These include asthma; lead poisoning; cancer; birth defects; mental retardation; autism; ADHD; and behavioral, learning and psychiatric disorders. Environmental links have already been established for many of these chronic diseases, and research is continuing to provide new evidence of environmental links each day.

According to Mount Sinai School of Medicine, children in New York today are exposed to thousands of synthetic chemicals and children are highly vulnerable to such chemicals due to their rapid growth and development. Compounding the problem is the fact that poundfor- pound of body weight, children drink more water, eat more food, and breathe more air than adults, and therefore children have substantially heavier exposures to toxic chemicals that are present in water, food, or air. The result of early exposures to lead, pesticides, PCBs and other toxins can be a lifetime of disease and disability.

In New York many physicians are not trained to suspect the environment as a cause of disease with less than 20% of pediatricians receiving training in environmental history taking. Health care providers can provide immediate help and limit children’s exposure to environmental hazards through parental education, identification of hazardous exposures, and diagnosis and treatment of children. However, facilities where children can be seen and evaluated for environmental exposures are relatively few and widely dispersed across the nation.

“The Environmental Health Centers of Excellence will help close a gap in children’s health care by increasing the accuracy of diagnosis and improving the treatment of children’s diseases caused by environmental factors,” said DiNapoli.

“These Centers will provide a unique series of resources across all of New York State where children who have suffered toxic exposures can be medically evaluated and where children with diseases of environmental origin can receive skilled diagnosis and treatment. I commend Assemblyman DiNapoli on his foresight and vision in having established these new Centers of Excellence,” stated Philip J. Landrigan, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Community & Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

The information generated by the Centers will enable the network to prevent environmental threats to children’s health through identification of possible hazardous chemicals and areas of likely exposure. The nework’s impact on children’s environmental health will ultimately reduce economic and social costs for the state.