Today, October 8, 2026, is Children's Environmental Health Day, when we recognize the importance of protecting the most vulnerable among us from environmental health threats.
I would like to spotlight three organizations doing amazing work in this area.
The Children's Environmental Health Network works every day to protect children. With resources for healthcare providers, childcare workers, policy makers, voters, and parents, they deliver concrete advice to help children flourish. I know and have interviewed members of their staff and board, including Nse Witherspoon and Leyla McCurdy, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.
The Union of Concerned Scientists have been co-leading an effort to counter the systematic gutting of the EPA, destruction under the Trump Administration that will ensure that more and more children sicken and die of exposures and risks that were already on the increase every year thanks to the machinations of the petrochemical industry. Today, UCS highlighted the lapse of the Children's Environmental Protection Advisory Committee to the EPA (CHPAC), on which I have served -- only one of hundreds of such advisory committees that have been weakened or dissolved entirely.
The Environmental Protection Network, made up of hundreds of former EPA employees and political appointees, are continuing their essential work regardless of what happens with the federal government. It takes rare dedication to understand your vocation as so important that you continue even after salary and benefits cease. They are also co-leading efforts to hold Trump's EPA to account, to encourage them to reconstitute CHPAC and fulfill their MAHA agenda -- all aimed at keeping children healthy.
While it can be discouraging to see that our own government seems not to care about the health of our children, that does not mean that parents and the health community can just throw up their hands. We must persist in demanding protection for our children. We must refuse to be silenced. And we must make our displeasure felt in the next elections.
The book I have worked towards for more than 20 years, Poisoning Our Children, is now available for pre-order at https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/54124/poisoning-our-children
Pre-orders are hugely important, as they affect whether bookstores stock the book, how algorithms surface it, and how seriously publishers take authors. Your support matters more than you know. All author proceeds will be donated to Environmental Health non-profits like those described above.
