Moving towards making social toxins mainstream in children's environmental health

Abstract

Purpose of Review-While traditional disciplinary research theory and methods have focused separately on how social and physical environmental factors affect children's health, evolving research underscores important integrated effects.Recent findings-This review outlines the specific reasons why social determinants should be considered mainstream in children's environmental health research with particular focus on interactive effects between social and physical hazards. These include (a) sensitivity of overlapping physiological systems, via epigenesis, programming, and plasticity to social and physical environmental moderation that may impact health across the life span; (b) ways in which social environmental vulnerabilities moderate the effects of physical environmental factors providing specific examples related to respiratory health and neurodevelopment; (c) overlapping exposure distribution profiles; and (d) relevance to pediatric health disparities.Summary-Because of the covariance across exposures and evidence that social stress and other environmental toxins (e.g., pollutants, tobacco smoke) may influence common physiological pathways (e.g., oxidative stress, pro-inflammatory immune pathways, autonomic disruption), understanding the potential synergistic effects promises to more completely inform children's environmental health risk. While this discussion focuses around the respiratory and neurological systems, these concepts extend more broadly to children's psychological and physical development.

Homes of low-income minority families with asthmatic children have increased condition issues

“…A concept has been put forward suggesting the social contexts in which children are raised is just as detrimental to their development as physical environmental factors are. 45 It is also possible that epigenetic programming may cause long-lasting alterations in stressinduced phenotypic plasticity related to asthma risk. 46 There are frequent reports that nonwhite children living in poverty and residing in urban areas have a significantly higher risk of asthma than white children.…”

Epigenetics and Understanding the Impact of Social Determinants of Health

“…Due to the large health inequalities in this area social stressors have been used extensively to explain racial disparities in childhood asthma 20 . Indeed recent research suggests that the social context children are raised in may be equal to the natural environmental effects in asthma disease risk 21 .…”

A Systematic Review of the Interplay Between Social Determinants and Environmental Exposures for Early-Life Outcomes

“…Many studies have separately demonstrated that environmental contaminants like air pollution and metals as well as early-life social and psychosocial factors, such as living in poverty and experiences of adversity, have independent and substantial effects on a range of child health outcomes including asthma, cognition and behavior, obesity, and perinatal risks like being born low birth weight [2][3][4][5]. Fewer studies have considered explicitly the accumulation of risk and potential synergies between social and environmental risks as determinants of child health outcomes.…”