According to EPA's "Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment," children receive 50% of their lifetime cancer risks in the first two years of life.
In blood samples of children aged 2 to 4, concentrations of pesticide residues are six times higher in children eating conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables compared with those eating organic food
Parents, Guess What? Three New Studies Show TV Lowers Kids Learning Abilities
From:
July 4th, 2005
TV is Bad for Children's Education, Studies Say
By Andrew SternReuters
The more time children spend watching television the poorer they performacademically, according to three studies published on Monday.
Excessive television viewing has been blamed for increasing rates ofchildhood obesity and for aggressive behavior, while its impact on schoolinghave been inconclusive, researchers said.
But studies published on the topic in this month's Archives of Pediatrics &Adolescent Medicine concluded television viewing tended to have an adverseeffect on academic pursuits.
For instance, children in third grade (approximately 8 years old) who hadtelevisions in their bedrooms -- and therefore watched more TV -- scoredlower on standardized tests than those who did not have sets in their rooms.
In contrast, the study found having a home computer with access to theInternet resulted in comparatively higher test scores.
"Consistently, those with a bedroom television but no home computer accesshad, on average, the lowest scores and those with home computer access butno bedroom television had the highest scores," wrote study author DinaBorzekowski of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
American homes with children have an average of nearly three televisionseach, the report said, and children with televisions in their bedroomsaveraged nearly 13 hours of viewing a week compared to nearly 11 hours bychildren who did not have their own sets.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has urged parents to limit children'stelevision viewing to no more than one to two hours per day -- and to try tokeep younger children away from TV altogether.
LIMITED BENEFITS
In two other studies published in the same journal, children who regularlywatched television before the age of 3 ended up with lower test scores lateron, and children and adolescents who watched more television were lesslikely to go on to finish high school or earn a college degree.
University of Washington researchers reported that 59 percent of U.S.children younger than age 2 watch an average of 1.3 hours of television perday, though there is no programing of proven educational value for childrenthat young.
Their analysis of 1,800 children over a decade showed television watchingwas linked to poorer cognitive development among children younger than 3 andbetween the ages of 6 and 7.
TV watching appeared to help 3- to 5-year-olds with basic readingrecognition and short-term memory, but not reading comprehension ormathematics, so the net effect of television watching is "limited in itsbeneficial impact," wrote study author Frederick Zimmerman.
Similarly, Robert Hancox of the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand,found that children and adolescents who watched more television had lesseducational attainment regardless of their intelligence, socioeconomicstatus or childhood behavioral problems.
But condemning television as a vast wasteland -- government regulator NewtonMinow's oft-quoted diatribe against the medium -- would be unfair asprograming is not "monolithic," an editorial accompanying the studies said.
"Parents should be encouraged to incorporate well-produced, age-appropriateeducational TV into their children's lives. Such programing represents avaluable tool for stimulating children's cognitive development," wrote ArielChernin and Deborah Linebarger of the University of Pennsylvania.
No comments:
Post a Comment