Environmental Health Center

The Pediatric Environmental Health Center provides comprehensive, coordinated services for children exposed to environmental toxins. Services provided include:

• patient evaluation: complete history and physical exam
• laboratory testing: testing for toxic exposures
• environmental assessments: assistance with arranging for environmental assessments as well as with interpreting results of such assessments
• treatment provided by experienced pediatric environmental medicine toxicologists
• prevention: guidance and practical advice for reducing and eliminating exposures
• telephone and/or written consultations to treating primary care providers
• 24-hour telephone access: 1-888-Child14
• In addition to providing clinical services, our staff and affiliated staff are doing research to answer important questions in pediatric environmental health, including:
• How do lead and mercury affect children of different ages?
• What’s the best way to treat children with lead and mercury poisoning? When should medications that bind metals be used?
• For adolescents that work: what type of toxic exposures do they have, and how can overexposures be prevented?
• What do other health professionals, such as pediatric primary care providers, need to know about pediatric environmental health?
• What are the best ways to promote education about pediatric environmental health issues?

Recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates reveal that almost 500,000 children between the ages of one and five living in the United States have elevated lead levels. About one out of every 25 children has dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstream.

Researchers in the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston have come up with device that treats sepsis, an infection in the blood, by using magnetism to quickly pull pathogens out of the blood.