Children, Cancer, and the Environment
Whenever cancer strikes an infant or child, it is a tragedy. Though many children survive cancer, treatments can cause suffering and disruption of family life. Improvements in treatment are extremely important, but our ultimate goal is to prevent cancer in children from occurring in the first place.
To prevent cancer, we need to understand as much as we can about its causes and to identify those that can be changed. When we identify elements in the environment that contribute to cancer, we can take steps to eliminate them and protect our children and ourselves. These pages give basic information about cancer in children and describe what we know about environmental causes, particularly pesticides.
- Leukemia
- Cancers of the brain and nervous system
- Lymphomas
- Soft tissue sarcoma
- Wilms tumor (a kidney cancer),
- Neuroblastoma (cancer of the sympathetic nervous system),
- Bone cancers (Ewings sarcoma and osteosarcoma),
- Retinoblastoma (cancer of the eye)
- Germ cell tumors
On to Next: How Common is Childhood Cancer?
