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   Air Pollution Worsening Kids’ Mental Health?

Brain Bienkowski reports,

Cincinnati study finds fine particulate matter exposure linked to increased psychiatric-related emergency room visits for kids. Children exposed to high amounts of air pollution were more likely to end up in the emergency room for a mental health problem a couple days later than children with lower exposure, according to a new study. This adds to growing evidence that dirty air may be causing and worsening depression, anxiety and other mental health issues in children and teenagers. Researchers from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati examined 13,176 emergency room visit to the Medical Center by 6,812 children from 2011 to 2015 for psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, suicidality, personality disorders and schizophrenia.

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BLOG#10

It is to my greatest surprise that non-cigarettes related smokes could also be carcinogenic, however, I have always had a suspicion that constant exposure to woods and charcoal smokes must has something to do with the deaths of five Nigeria women local chefs, who died from lungs and breast cancer within the past 10 years in the bay area. If wood and charcoal are carcinogens, how best can we protect our highly needed chefs from this exposure? Women are prone to this kind of exposure, and must be educated on the effects of this indoor air pollution. 

    

BLOG&9

  

Lived in the Bayview Hunters Point(BVHP) for 9 years and thinking in retrospect, I can relate my son’s childhood asthma and my husband’s chronic bronchitis to the poor air quality which was impacted by variety of different sources, including diesel and gasoline from vehicles traveling on the highway 280 and 101, anxious gas fumes from the southeast wastewater treatment facility, pollution from the PG&E hunter’s point power plant, and the Mirant power plant which is less than a mile away, and air emissions from hundreds of industrial activities, most notably those located in the hunter’s point naval shipyard. BVHP is part of an area designated as non attainment for state and federal ozone air quality standards.  Air pollution is deadly, it is important for me to join the alliance of nurses for health environments, a network of nurses from around the country, who act on the notion that our environment and health are inextricably connected. Environmental toxicants have been linked with the exacerbation of asthma, COPD, and CHF, breast, prostate, and blood cancers, and other cardiac and neurological disorders. Healthcare providers can through education protect the health of their consumers and include environmental health assessment in their history talking.  Contact and report to EPA, OSHA or the appropriate health office of any environmental health issues of concern.