The rate of children living in poverty this year will climb to nearly 22%, the highest rate in two decades, according to an analysis by the non-profit Foundation for Child Development. Nearly 17% of children were living in poverty in 2006, before the recession began.

McDonald's Corp has recalled 12 million "Shrek"-themed drinking glasses after the Consumer Product Safety Commission warned consumers to stop using them because they contain the toxic metal cadmium.

A first-of-its-kind law bars public high schools in Maryland from automatically sending student scores on a widely used military aptitude test to recruiters, a practice that critics say was giving the armed forces backdoor access to young people without their parents' consent.

The proposed common core national education standards for K-12 — which will impose higher academic standards on younger children — contradict decades of early education theory and research about how young children learn best and how to close the achievement gap.

Researchers link lower IQs in children to a chemical found in some plastics and food packaging

Just days after President Obama signed the new health care law, insurance companies are already arguing that, at least for now, they do not have to provide one of the benefits that the president calls a centerpiece of the law: coverage for certain children with pre-existing conditions.

Tens of thousands of children in the UK every year get asthma, chest infections and ear problems because they are exposed to smoke from their parents' cigarettes, doctors reveal today.

Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.

About 200 million children suffer from stunted growth in developing countries due to chronic undernourishment, which also contributes to one-third of child deaths worldwide, UNICEF said Wednesday.

Although the amount of lead in vinegar is small, experts say regularly consuming it may pose a risk, particularly to children. Eating one tablespoon a day of some balsamic or red wine vinegars can raise a young child’s lead level by more than 30 percent.

On a blustery afternoon, just down the road from a Mission Valley lot that’s already advertising Christmas trees, costumed sign bearers point the way to a recently opened Halloween store. Every October “they just pop up,” says one of the store’s temporary hires, explaining the magical birth of the seasonal one-stop shops.

Weiss, a breast cancer oncologist, suggested that everyday pollutants such as chemicals including bisphenol A and dioxins could bombard hormone receptors, causing abnormalities in the breast.

Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.

[A]fter spending countless dollars on failed advertising campaigns against peer-to-peer file-sharing, the RIAA has created a classroom activity to outsource the campaign to schoolchildren.

Young children's exposure to lead in the environment is harming their intellectual and emotional development, according to UK researchers.

After murders committed by juveniles spiked in the early 1990s, states toughened laws, making the United States the harshest nation in world in the legal punishment of children, according to a recent study. However, the number of children who killed declined in the late ’90s and has largely held steady this decade, leading some to question the practice of tougher sentencing.

On crisp fall mornings in the Allegheny River valley, the fog that hangs over Highlands High School usually burns off by the first bell. What remains in the air is the question.

Researchers for the first time have linked air pollution exposure before birth with lower IQ scores in childhood, bolstering evidence that smog may harm the developing brain.

If terrorists were putting phthalates in our drinking water, we would be galvanized to defend ourselves and to spend billions of dollars to ensure our safety. But the risks are just as serious if we’re poisoning ourselves, and it’s time for the Obama administration and Congress to show leadership in this area.

For generations, Ghana and other West African nations have served as a hub for child trafficking and slavery. An estimated 200,000 children in West and Central Africa perform unpaid labor. They are given minimal food and clothing, are deprived of schooling and medical care and are often subjected to physical abuse. Recent laws outlawing slavery in many African countries have had limited effect.

A growing number of American children are living in poverty and with unemployed parents, and are facing the threat of hunger, according to a federal report released yesterday.

Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.

The U.S. Marine Corps is wooing public school districts across the country, expanding a network of military academies that has grown steadily despite criticism that it's a recruiting ploy.

Toymaker Mattel Corp. agreed Friday to pay $2.3 million in civil penalties for violating a federal lead paint ban that resulted in the recall of millions of its Barbie, Dora and other popular-branded toys in 2007.

Mobile telephones are to be banned from French primary schools, and operators must offer handsets that allow only text messages, under government measures to reduce the health risk to children.

Everyone wonders how Bernie Madoff lives with himself after his decades of fraud. But what about Louis Camilleri?

Facing deep funding cuts during the economic downturn, increasing numbers of school districts nationwide are contemplating trimming the traditional school week to four days to save money.

The findings, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, add to a growing body of evidence that the timing of puberty is changing, possibly related to environmental exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body.

Even low levels of lead found in the blood during early childhood can adversely affect how a child's cardiovascular system responds to stress and could possibly lead to high blood pressure later in life, new research hints.

Exposure to chemicals used in plastics may be linked with childhood obesity, according to results from a long-term health study on girls who live in East Harlem and surrounding communities that were presented to community leaders on Thursday by researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Canada on Saturday will become the first country to formally declare bisphenol A hazardous to human health and officially inform the baby-product industry it will no longer be able to use the chemical in baby bottles.

One of the largest studies of the effect of air pollution on pregnancy has concluded that women exposed to high levels of pollutants are at greater risk of having low birthweight babies.

As world leaders gather in London for the Group of 20 summit meeting, the most wrenching statistic is this: According to World Bank estimates, the global economic crisis will cause an additional 22 children to die per hour, throughout all of 2009.

Children who live in homes with vinyl floors, which can emit chemicals called phthalates, are more likely to have autism, according to research by Swedish and U.S. scientists published Monday.

A fast-food restaurant within about 500 feet of a school may lead to at least a 5 percent increase in the obesity rate at that school, according to a study released on Friday.

An Enquirer review of city health records found that 55 of the 268 properties identified as having lead hazards have been on the city's books since before 1999. Yet the properties have not been cleaned and the owners have not been prosecuted.

Bisphenol A, the controversial chemical used to make plastic, lingers far longer in the bodies of babies who ingest it than in adults because they lack a crucial liver enzyme needed to break it down...

Chinese officials told the state media that birth defects are increasing at an alarming rate and that a major reason was degradation of the environment.

Under pressure from manufacturers, federal regulators have postponed for one year certain testing requirements for lead and other toxic substances in toys and other children's products.

A new study concludes that hundreds of young children in the District experienced potentially damaging amounts of lead in their blood when lead levels were dramatically rising in the city's tap water.

For two decades, state public health officials have waged a massive campaign to eliminate children's exposure to lead, yet some specialists are concerned that the toxic element may have found its way into schools in the form of artificial turf fields.

Some healthcare trivia: In the United States, what is the No. 1 reason people are admitted to the hospital? Not diabetes, not heart attack, not stroke. The answer is something that isn't even a disease: childbirth.

In pockets of Haiti accessible only by donkey or foot, children are dying of malnutrition, their already meager food supply cut by a series of devastating storms that destroyed crops, wiped out livestock, and sent food prices spiraling.

Nery Castañeda tackled a job that was never intended for kids his age. One afternoon last fall, the 17-year-old Guatemala native ran a machine to grind damaged pallets into mulch. When a co-worker at the Greensboro plant returned from another task, he didn't see Nery – until he looked inside the shredder.

A government report claiming that bisphenol A is safe was written largely by the plastics industry and others with a financial stake in the controversial chemical...

After the White House intervened, the Environmental Protection Agency last week weakened a rule on airborne lead standards at the last minute so that fewer polluters would have their emissions monitored.

In February, 25,000 rubber ducks in Craig Wolfe's inventory will be illegal to sell because they contain chemicals called phthalates, which some studies indicate harm early childhood development.

Children who are exposed in the womb and early life to both cigarette smoke and lead are more than eight times as likely to develop ADHD as children who aren't exposed to either environmental toxin...

Children who receive a rich variety of home learning before they start school achieve better results in maths tests at 10, according to a government-funded study into childhood learning.

A lobbying group on the payroll of the chemical industry is launching a public relations blitz aimed at derailing California's proposal to ban Bisphenol A in products designed for babies and children under the age of 3.

Children have lost touch with the natural world and are unable to identify common animals and plants, according to a survey.

A recommendation from an influential doctors group that some children as young as 8 be aggressively treated with cholesterol-lowering drugs has triggered debate over whether there is enough scientific evidence to justify such a move.

Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.

Anybody worried about the potential danger from plastic bottles and cups, especially for the very young, should take note.

China is now investigating whether hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poor children of the Yi ethnic minority group in Liangshan were lured or even kidnapped to work in factories that are increasingly desperate for the kind of cheap labor that powered China to prosperity over the past two decades.

Increased breast-feeding during the first months of life appears to raise a child's verbal IQ, according to a study of nearly 14,000 children that was released Monday.

Medicine mix-ups, accidental overdoses and bad drug reactions harm roughly 1 in 15 hospitalized children, according to the first scientific test of a new detection method.

The chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Deborah Platt Majoras, is leaving her job. She's going to become vice president and general counsel for Procter & Gamble (P&G).

Last fall, when children lost consciousness after eating toy beads, parents could not quickly find information about others who had endured the same harrowing ordeal.

In the coming days, the Senate will be tasked with salvaging a badly discredited agency: the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Last year, more than 25 million hazardous playthings -- most of them produced in Chinese factories -- were recalled by U.S. manufacturers and federal regulators.