Globalization of the children's environmental health movement

Since the 1950s, the American Academy of Pediatrics has served as an incubator for physician-activists working to protect children from environmental hazards. In the late 1980s, the children`s environmental health movement also emerged from this incubator and ten tears later it became an international movement when the World Health Organization (WHO) set up a Task Force for the Protection of Children's Environmental Health. The Task Force has promoted the development of training materials about children's health and the environment and has advocated worldwide for environmental policies to protect children. During those same 20 years, two major paradigm changes have occurred with respect to the problem of mercury pollution. First, our understanding of the health effects of mercury has been greatly expanded and we are able to measure deleterious health effects in children at levels that were not previously considered to be harmful. The second paradigm change was the new understanding that the mercury problem could not be solved by having each country address it with country-level solutions. It became apparent that there was a need for a long-term, global solution. The current proposed solution is the Minamata Convention that aims to produce a legally-binding and comprehensive treaty to reduce mercury emissions from all sources.