National Child Health and Environment Policy Consultation

Summary

The goal of this project was to facilitate policy debate by bringing together a broad range of stakeholders, including scientists, academics, government representatives, industry representatives, health professionals and others to work towards a consensus on how to improve children’s environmental health. By involving scientists, industry, and government, the project demonstrated the broad base of support for proposed reforms, thereby ensuring the issue was addressed by policy makers.

Grant Outputs

Report of the National Policy Consultation on Children’s Health and Environment – http://www.healthyenvironmentforkids.ca/resources/report-national-policy-consultation-childrens-health-and-environment

This report summarizes the findings of six workshops involving a variety of stakeholders, including industry officials, government officials, non-government organizations, scientists, academics and others. The meetings facilitated discussion about how to mitigate the impacts of harmful environmental toxins on children’s health. The contents of the workshops were wide-ranging and resulted in many suggestions on how to improve environmental health for children. For example, there was broad support for amending the Hazardous Products Act (HPA) to include governmental product recall powers for dealing with known unsafe products. Many groups favoured evidence based decision making in introducing and maintaining potentially harmful chemicals in the marketplace. The report suggests that more work needs to be done on tracing the health effects for children of aggregate and cumulative exposures to pollutants.