Clean air for young children: an exception now, but hopefully the rule soon.
If you breathe polluted air three times more quickly, how does that affect your health? What if, as a child, you can no longer go swimming due to poor air quality? Or, as a parent, you constantly worry about what polluted air is doing to your children? Or if you work as a paediatric pulmonologist and see that there is little room in politics for this important subject?
To draw attention to the invisible pandemic of air pollution, we entered into discussions with a number of key figures. In collaboration with Longfonds, we developed a podcast (in Dutch only) about the impact of air quality on young children.
Breathing clean air is essential for the functioning of vital organs such as the heart and brain. Because children breathe at a rate two or three times faster than adults, clean and healthy air is even more important to them. But what are children in the Netherlands actually exposed to? How good is the air quality in the country and how does this affect the lives and health of children? What can we do to better protect them and improve air quality for them?
In the podcast Gezonde Lucht (Clean Air), we get answers to these important questions from seven-year-old Noëlle, who suffers from a severe form of asthma, together with her family and two paediatric pulmonologists. You can listen to this interactive podcast indoors if you want to, but we recommend listening while on an outdoor walk as the podcast contains a breathing exercise and a scan of your own environment.
The podcast (available in Dutch only) can be listened to on the following platforms:
The Bernard van Leer Foundation is committed to a good start for young children, as is the Longfonds, which works every day to improve the health of their lungs.
Curious about what you can do? Check out: www.longfonds.nl/watkanjijdoen.
Give children clean air. Now and in the future.
