Kids and Climate Health Zone
USEPA
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a new online tool called the Kids and Climate Health Zone. This interactive website provides a collection of stories and information about how the hazards of climate stressors are impacting health in different childhood life stages across regions of the United States and what people can do to protect their children and families. The tool uses the best available scientific information from the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Fifth National Climate Assessment and other published resources. Members of the President’s Task Force Subcommittee on Climate, Emergencies, and Disasters provided review and input into the site’s contents.
Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate change due to a variety of physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social factors. Climate change-related impacts in childhood can have lifelong consequences due to their effects on learning, physical health, chronic disease, and other conditions. Changing climate conditions, public health emergencies, and disasters can compound and affect children’s environmental health and safety.
It's important for kids, their parents and caregivers, and other adults around them to be aware of these consequential impacts and ideas on how to mitigate them before children’s environmental health is negatively impacted.
Check out the Kids and Climate Health Zone to find information on how climate change can affect different climate stressors on children across their life stages, and read stories about:
- A toddler who is struggling with stress after his home is flooded and the steps that can be taken to mitigate the risks associated with flooding.
- A teenager who is dealing with extreme heat during athletic practice and actions to take to stay healthy.
- A pregnant woman who is exposed to wildfire smoke in her neighborhood and what resources she can use to keep herself and her baby safe.
