Dr. Allen Dozor had faced his fair share of parental freak-outs.
One incident involved a family discovering their child”™s day care center was on the site of a former mercury thermometer factory.
Another involved a child with severe asthma who had a revolving-door relationship with the emergency room.
Unbeknownst to the patient”™s mother, blanketing the family”™s floor under the carpet in what looked like a “beautiful new apartment complex” grew a roomful of mold.
The chief of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Maria Fareri Children”™s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla said that as soon as the mold was removed, “he was 90 percent better.”
These cases are fairly common for Dozor, who also serves as director of the Children”™s Environmental Health Center of the Hudson Valley at Maria Fareri and the School of Public Health at New York Medical College in Valhalla.
Dozor was recruited by Dr. Robert Amler, vice president of government affairs at New York Medical College and dean of the School of Health Sciences and Practice and Institute of Public Health, to head the Children”™s Environmental Health Center, which he formed in November 2008.
“I wasn”™t aware until a few years ago this movement to develop centers for children”™s environmental health and that there is a real push to develop an actual pediatric subspecialty with fellowships, training and boards of directors,” Dozor said.
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Now that the word has spread, Dozor said the center is being contacted for “educational materials, teaching and to give conferences.”
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Topics range from environmental concerns such as mold and chemicals in cleaning products to treated playground equipment and ozone levels.
“We”™re teaching doctors, nurses and other public health professionals about how they can identify toxic exposures and how they can assess their patients,” said Amy Ansehl, director of community outreach and education for the center. “We”™re trying to really enhance their skills in terms of helping promote a healthier environment for their pediatric population.”
Through program funding from the Westchester Community Foundation, Alfred E. Smith Foundation and the state Department of Health, the center is able to conduct educational conferences, like a recent gathering of child care agency directors.
Diane Heck, chairwoman of the Department of Environmental Health Science at the college, noted the role research plays in the center”™s work.
“Many of the exposures, pointedly pulmonary ones, are so critical because their (children) lungs are still growing,” she said. “If they have responses to the toxins through things like asthma attacks when they”™re young ”¦their total lung development can be hindered.”
Separating fact from fiction is key when “people get concerned about things they hear on television,” Heck said, such as plasticizers in water bottles.
For Dozor, “it”™s rewarding to see the light bulb that goes off at some of those lectures and how schools are starting to think about the chemicals they purchase and that maybe there”™s something better they can do.”
He said there is a dilemma in supporting educational initiatives and clinical consultations because although “there is some clinical income that supports it, the research and teaching are dependent on grants and this is a tough economic climate.”
Keeping in mind the realities of a state with real budget concerns, Dozor refuses to give up.
“One grant we applied for, which may or may not get funded, is for children who come into the emergency room with asthma,” he said. “We”™d like to send an environmental engineer out to their home to look for environmental problems, to see what they find and how that affects their asthma.”
If Dozor”™s severe asthma patient had continued on the road he was traveling down, it could “have caused permanent scarring and possible death.”
“People don”™t realize kids die of asthma,” he said.
