National Children's Study To Begin In Queens

An estimated 250,000 children in New York City are affected by asthma. Another 206,000 are learning disabled. And 21 percent of kindergarten children in the city are obese.

Does air pollution cause asthma? Does television watching cause attention deficit disorder? What can be done to prevent the apparent epidemic of childhood obesity from becoming worse?

In a sci-fi-like study of stunning proportion that is all science and no fiction, future children of Queens, followed from preconception to age 21, may help to answer these and other issues concerning environmental influences on children's health and development in the upcoming National Children's Study (NCS).

NCS is the largest long-term study of children's health and development ever to be conducted in the United States and it will begin in Queens next summer when 5,000 women of childbearing age are recruited from July 2008 to January 2009 and then 1,250 children are enrolled as they are born between December 2008 and January 2013.

Before conceiving, participating women will be interviewed during a home visit and then again after conception, in their first trimester, when they will be given an ultrasound test. In the second and third trimester of pregnancy, participating women will visit a clinic. After giving birth, they will be visited in the hospital.

Thereafter, phone interviews will be conducted at age 3 months, 9 months, 18 months, 24 months, and 30 months for the child, while home visits will be made at 6 and 12 months.

Followup clinic visit for the child then occur at ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 16, and finally 20 years old. "We are asking a lot of the participants in this study," Dr. Leo Trasande, NCS Queens site director, said.

While NCS will involve approximately 100,000 children in 105 counties across the United States, Queens is one of just seven vanguard centers. "Queens is number one, the very first [study center] to start," Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, Queens NCS, principal investigator, said.

NCS aspires to provide a wealth of data to answer multiple questions. Examples of research questions to be examined include: are prenatal exposures to pesticides linked to increased risk for learning and developmental disabilities; are early childhood viral infections linked to the occurrence of asthma, and do individual, family and community factors affect childhood injuries.

"This is like a dream come true," Landrigan, chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital, said at the September Borough Board meeting.

"Rates of disease in children are going up," Landrigan said. "Asthma has tripled in New York City over the last 20 years, obesity has become epidemic and cancer is the second leading cause of child deaths, surpassed only by injury. We want to prepare a blueprint for prevention."

"Children [today] are surrounded by chemicals," Trasande said. The increasing scope of environmental exposures is denoted by the fact that there are now more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals, with one to three new chemicals registered each year. Trasande said children are especially at risk of exposure to 2,800 high-production, volume chemicals.

Also, total water releases of toxins increased by 370 percent from 1998 to 2002 in New York state, while land releases increased by 29 percent. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that 430,000 housing units have a high risk of lead hazards.

"We are doing a poor job of testing for toxicity in kids," Trasande said.

In the study, conducted jointly by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. EPA, teams, working with doctors, nurses, community leaders, and public health officials will visit the homes, schools and neighborhoods of the children and families.

Samples, such as indoor and outdoor air, tap water, dust and soil, will be collected from children's environments and participants will also visit study centers where samples of blood and urine will be collected and questionnaires about the health and activities of children and their families will be compiled.

No medicines or treatments are required for participants and all information collected will be kept private.

"Queens will be at the forefront of this initiative and we welcome your participation," Landrigan said. For more information visit www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov or contact Suzette B. VanderBeek, NCS Queens Study Coordinator at 212-241-1811 or suzette.vanderbeek@mssm.edu.