US – An analysis by Frederica Perera, director of the Colombia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH), identifies the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and pollutants as the main cause of many current childhood cases of certain diseases.

In the analysis robust scientific evidence from CCCEH and other institutions were examined, and the conclusion is that drastically reducing our dependence on fossil fuels will benefit the health of children. Even seeing the problem from a strictly economic point of view, reducing the use of fossil fuels will lead to substantial savings in health costs of medical treatments for such cases of diseases; savings only for the United States would be on the order of thousands of millions of dollars.

Among the improvements in child health that would occur with the decline in the use of fossil fuels include reduced cases of babies born with low weight, childhood asthma cases and cases of neurodevelopmental problems such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).