OPINION: Power Plan is good for children's health

The recently finalized Clean Power Plan is an essential tool in addressing climate change and a step forward in protecting children’s health.

As an advocate for healthy kids, I embrace the Clean Power Plan as a powerful means to help ensure a safe environment for current and future generations of children in Montana, across the country, and around the world.

Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970. By 1990, the Clean Air Act prevented 205,000 premature deaths, 18 million childhood respiratory illnesses and the loss of 10.4 million IQ points for children from lead exposure. The Clean Air Act is now being extended and the Clean Power Plan will help curtail climate change by cutting carbon pollution from its biggest source — power plants. Power plants are the largest U.S. carbon pollution source and generate approximately one-third of all U.S. greenhouse gas pollution.

Any discussion of the Clean Power Plan and a state implementation strategy must include the public health benefits that will result. The World Health Organization estimates that over 80 percent of the current health burden from the changing climate is on children younger than 5 years old. This is due both to children’s small size and the nature of their growth and development.

When it comes to air pollution, kids are more vulnerable than adults. Children breathe faster, taking more air into their lungs as compared to adults, spend more time outdoors, and their lungs are still developing. Outdoor air pollution is linked to respiratory problems in children including decreased lung function, coughing, wheezing, more frequent respiratory illnesses and asthma. Reducing carbon pollution will help to make our environment healthier for children and avoid child lung disease.

As a Montana pediatrician, I am concerned about the health effects of climate change on children, and I personally see how climate change impacts the children I care for in my practice. Since the early 1980s, the length and severity of our wildfire season has increased significantly. Children are more likely than adults to be negatively affected by smoky air.

Over 15,000 children in Montana suffer from asthma. Asthma rates have risen over the years. Given that poor air quality is a trigger for asthma exacerbation, children in our communities are already bearing a significant health burden that is worsened by climate change. For children with asthma, exercise and outdoor play can be unsafe instead of healthy. These kids deserve all the help we can give them.

Reducing carbon pollution from power plants will also reduce other air pollutants including particulate matter pollution, which has significant negative health effects, especially for kids, seniors, and individuals with heart and lung disease. It is estimated that the Clean Power Plan, when fully implemented, will decrease by 70 percent the pollutants that contribute to soot and smog resulting in 6,600 fewer premature deaths, 150,000 fewer asthma attacks and 180,000 fewer missed days of school.

 As parents, health-care professionals, educators, and policy makers, we make daily choices to help our children stay safe and healthy. Equally important are the choices we make regarding the quality of air that our kids are breathing.

In developing a Montana-made strategy for complying with the Clean Power Plan’s carbon pollution limits, our state has a tremendous opportunity to better protect children, and all Montanans. If we are serious in our collective commitment to the health and well-being of Montana children and families, we must be dedicated to creating a compliance strategy that emphasizes clean energy and energy efficiency and that is most protective of public health.

With clean, renewable energy options at our fingertips, the state of Montana can and must achieve the required carbon pollution reductions as quickly as possible. Together we can bring our children a world that is a bit greener and a bit healthier.

Pepper Henyon, a Bozeman pediatrician, is president, of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.