Posted by
investment
528 days ago
(http://www.int.iol.co.za)
Category: Science Discovery Environment |
July 30 2007 at 12:58AM
Geneva - Four million children under the age of five die every year due to environmental hazards including polluted air or water, or exposure to chemicals, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
Poisonings, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases and malaria carried by mosquitoes which thrive in dirty water account for most of the toll, the United Nations agency said in a technical report.
"This is something that intuitively we have always recognised, but we never put a number to it," WHO expert Jenny Pronczuk told a news briefing.
About 30 percent of illnesses and deaths in children due to disease can be attributed to environmental factors, according to the report.
But chemicals have different effects as children grow, and often the effects of exposure to toxins while in the womb only emerge later in adolescence, the WHO said in the report drawn up by 24 scientific experts.
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