THE AIR THEY BREATHE

Why the climate crisis is “a health crisis, first and foremost, for children.”

Pediatrician Hendrickson, a mother of three, lives in Reno, Nevada, the nation’s “fastest-warming city” and one directly in the path of smoke of many California wildfires. Distressed at what she is witnessing in her practice, she adds to the steady stream of climate change polemics with a heavy emphasis on the scientific background and effect on vulnerable young bodies. Children are not merely small adults, she emphasizes. A newborn’s immature systems—respiratory, neurological, immunological—require nearly two decades to mature, and a toxic environment, no less than malnutrition, disease, and abuse, can be crippling. Children raised in polluted air, she writes, “are more likely to have smaller, stiffer lungs, be prone to asthma, pneumonia, and bronchitis, and die younger than people raised in healthy air.” Furthermore, children cannot cool their bodies as efficiently as adults, and Hendrickson’s stories from America’s heatstroke capital, Arizona, make for eye-opening, disheartening reading. That people in tropical nations are fleeing unbearable heat is old news, but the author notes that diseases from the global south are spreading farther afield. The world’s greatest infectious killer, malaria, is appearing more frequently in the U.S. Mosquitoes have also brought new, obscure, and harder-to-treat viruses, including West Nile, Zika, and Chikungunya. They affect everyone, but children most of all. Unfortunately, this subject is so politicized that climate change deniers are unlikely to read this book, but compassionate, engaged citizens will find it educational—though the traditional how-to-fix-it conclusion seems only modestly hopeful. Like most writers on the topic, Hendrickson urges readers to take action as individuals: “Vote for leaders who will end fossil fuel subsidies…think about what your habits and purchases really cost.”

A pediatrician offers a unique perspective on the continuing dire situation regarding climate change.