Free And For Me

AAP Books For Parents

Protecting Your Child’s Health Has Medical Questions With Answers

When it comes to raising children in today’s environment, it is hard to keep up the rapid changes.    As a parent of children that are 11 years apart, I can see the difference in my concerns.  

In the book Protecting Your Child’s Health, Expert Answers To Urgent Environmental Questions, many questions are answered for parents of children of all ages.   

Because of their smaller, rapidly growing bodies, babies, children, and adolescents are at a higher risk of negative effects from exposure to environmental hazards. Protecting Your Child’s Health: Expert Answers to Urgent Environmental Questions (American Academy of Pediatrics, October 2020), provides guidance from the experts at the AAP to help parents protect their children from toxins where they live, learn and play –as well help to prevent unnecessary exposure. With an easy-to-follow Q&A format that offers advice across a variety of environmental topics, Protecting Your Child’s Health empowers parents and caregivers to make educated choices and arms them with invaluable information about food and water safety, air pollution, sun protection, lead, radiation, and pesticides that children may encounter at home,at school or in the community.

While reading through Chapter 10, titled Your Teenager, A Whole New World, question 10 stood out for me. 

Question: My teenager has asthma, for which she takes daily medication. She wants to get a part-time job. Can I help direct her to work that won’t cause her asthma to flare up?

Answer: Teenagers need to ask potential employers about the tasks they will be doing and whether they may be exposed to any chemical lung irritants, cold, or allergens. Although increasingly infrequent because of indoor smoking bans in many states, a restaurant with a smoking section is not a wise choice for a teenager with asthma. A customer service or cashier job should provide a better breathing environment, or the teenager with asthma may seek work in an ice cream store that does not allow smoking, as long as the use of cleaning materials that are lung irritants is not also required. In any job, parents should be concerned about adult supervision, job training, and safety training. It is important for parents to visit the workplace. A job that requires personal protective equipment suggests a possible risk that should be explored and discussed with the adolescent. Potential chemical exposures in vocational education, shop or art classes, work-study, and volunteer work or hobbies should be considered.

My daughter is an adult now, but dealing with her asthma has always been a concern.   She has had double pneumonia, and there have always been many hospital and doctor visits, ever since she was four months old. When she was an infant, I quickly learned that I had to advocate for my daughter and teach her how to do so for herself.   Many people that do not have asthma do not understand the seriousness of it.

Although my daughter is grown, we still have discussions about how she will do everything to avoid a flare-up.  She recently called me because she was called back to work.  The first thing she told her employer was, she is at a higher risk of contracting COVID 19 because of her asthma.  They assured her that they have been trying to be extremely safe and would make sure she would be in a safe environment.   The way they are handling the pandemic and keeping her safe has been impressive. 

Protecting Your Child’s Health is a good read for parents while dealing with the many environmental changes and concerns. 

It is important to protect our children. 

Summary

Article Name

Protecting Your Child's Health Has Medical Questions With Answers

Description

Excerpt answers to urgent environmental questions.

Author

KD

Publisher Name

Free and For Me