title: Climate change and children's health.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To present the latest data that demonstrate how climate change affects children's health and to identify the principal ways in which climate change puts children's health at risk.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Data continue to emerge that further implicate climate change as contributing to health burdens in children. Climate models have become even more sophisticated and consistently forecast that greenhouse gas emissions will lead to higher mean temperatures that promote more intense storms and droughts, both of which have profound implications for child health. Recent climate models shed light upon the spread of vector-borne disease, including Lyme disease in North America and malaria in Africa. Modeling studies have found that conditions conducive to forest fires, which generate harmful air pollutants and damage agriculture, are likely to become more prevalent in this century due to the effects of greenhouse gases added to earth's atmosphere.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Through many pathways, and in particular via placing additional stress upon the availability of food, clean air, and clean water and by potentially expanding the burden of disease from certain vector-borne diseases, climate change represents a major threat to child health. Pediatricians have already seen and will increasingly see the adverse health effects of climate change in their practices. Because of this, and many other reasons, pediatricians have a unique capacity to help resolve the climate change problem.
authors.affiliation: Center for Health and the Global Environment, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. aaron_bernstein@hms.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Aaron S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Bernstein
authors.forename: Samuel S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Myers
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects; D000818:Animals; D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare; D057231:Climate Change; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission; D004199:Disease Vectors; D004403:Dysentery / Q000209:etiology; D005523:Food Supply; D006801:Humans; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012140:Respiratory Tract Diseases / Q000209:etiology; D058438:Water Cycle; D014881:Water Supply