By Graham Cook
Award-winning SFU researcher looks into the importance of the environment when considering children’s health
Bruce Lanphear, a professor and researcher in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU, has co-authored a paper in the Future of Children journal which asserts that the elimination of risk factors in a child’s environment should take priority over the development of medicines. Lanphear co-authored the work with Stephen Rauch, a data analyst at the Child & Family Research Institute in Vancouver.
The paper, “Prevention of Disability in Children: Elevating the Role of Environment,” was published in May 2012 and compares trends in disabilities in children such as asthma, behavioural problems, and obesity to the emergence of chronic disease in adults, and contrasts those with traditional childhood infections such as polio or measles. Bruce Lanphear spoke with The Peak and shared his opinion that too much emphasis has been put on treatment of such problems and not enough attention has been given to prevention. He blamed this in part on the prevalence of the medical model, wherein medical issues are treated for profit.
Lanphear also asserted that those ailments with a proven or emerging link to environmental risk factors should be dealt with using a prevention model. Such factors include, but are not limited to, environmental toxicants, social inequities, injury risk factors, marketing to children, unsafe housing, and air pollution.
As an example, Bruce Lanphear pointed to the poorer neighbourhoods of Vancouver which generally have higher levels of traffic and, therefore, higher levels of pollutants. In addition, they contain older housing that may not be maintained properly as well as social issues such as violence and lack of access to recreational areas.
Lanphear won the 2011 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy following his extensive work in exposing the risks that lead poses to humans. He is the 17th winner of this award and the first from the Faculty of Health Sciences who was involved in studies that showed there is no safe level of lead for children.
