CONTACT: Sasha Tenenbaum
Senior Manager, Media and Public Engagement
[email protected]
(917) 887-0146
Washington, DC—Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new report: Climate Change and Children’s Health in the United States. Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate impacts for multiple reasons, including the fact that their bodies are still growing and developing. The new report aims to describe and quantify future impacts of climate change on children in the US at different projected levels of climate warming, based on the best-available literature and data. Five key climate threats are addressed: extreme heat, air quality, changing seasons, flooding, and infectious diseases.
In response to the new report, Moms Clean Air Force Director and Co-Founder Dominique Browning released the following statement:
“We’ve been saying for ten years that children are at the heart of our concern about global warming. EPA has a new report that shows exactly how devastating the impacts of a warming world are on those we hold most dear.”
Moms Clean Air Force Senior Policy Analyst Elizabeth Bechard released the following statement:
“EPA’s new report offers a clear, compelling overview of how climate change impacts our children’s health. Its findings underscore the necessity of considering children’s well-being in every climate policy—and the moral urgency of taking effective action to stop climate pollution on behalf of younger and future generations.
“We know that children are especially vulnerable to nearly all of the health impacts of climate change, from extreme heat and worsened air quality to coastal flooding and increased prevalence of insect-borne diseases. The new report is painful to read. But necessary. It offers an important roadmap for policymakers, parents, teachers, health care providers, and childcare workers by highlighting both the challenges we face and potential solutions. For all who care about children’s well-being, EPA’s new report is a call to action—a call we must answer for our children’s sake.”
