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The American Child Death Toll Is Mortifying
At some point or another, something will happen to you as a parent that will turn you — no doubt a once normal, fun-loving person — into an obsessive lunatic. In my case, it happened when my son was just six months old and I learned that the supposedly “organic” baby food pouches that he was addicted to were, in fact, chock full of carcinogenic heavy metals that have been linked to numerous neurological disorders, including autism.
This would not be the last time I was confronted with the alarming prospect that the products sold to us at our grocery stores, pharmacies, and online retailers are possibly poisonous — even the ones labeled “organic.” Despite living in this country my entire life, the fact that U.S. food safety hovers dangerously close to The Jungle levels of noxiousness somehow evaded me.
All of this is to say that when I saw the headline “US children are much more likely to die than kids in similar countries,” you better believe I thought I was prepared. Inevitably, I assumed, American children were dying from one of the countless chemicals or particles I had already painstakingly driven from my home. What was it going to be? Sulfates? Microplastics? Heavy metals? Nitrates? Synthetic dyes?
Unfortunately, the problem isn’t so simple to root out. Instead, it seems to be holistic, multifactorial, and staggering in scale. According to a recent study by Christopher B. Forrest and others published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), over the past seventeen years American children’s health has deteriorated across virtually every measurable indicator, with U.S. children now dying at rates 78% to 80% higher than children in other wealthy nations.
Georgia’s Kindergarten Vaccination Rates Decline as More Parents Claim Exemptions
New childhood vaccination data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that Georgia vaccination rates are decreasing, with 86.8% of the state’s children fully up-to-date on their required vaccines when they entered kindergarten last year.
The state’s exemption rate is also on the rise, at 4.8%, with most granted for religious rather than medical reasons. But that’s not the whole story. Some public health experts say the remainder of unvaccinated children likely includes some who weren’t able to access the shots. It’s hard to know for sure because data released by the state Department of Public Health is limited.
The falling vaccination rates raise concerns as children return to school this week, and the United States sees the highest number of measles cases since the early 1990s, according to CDC data. Georgia has reported six measles cases this year, all in unvaccinated people. Those cases were contained to members of two families.
Kids and Caffeine: What Every Parent Should Know About This Hidden Health Risk
The afternoon coffee run might be a daily ritual for adults, but when it comes to children and caffeine, the landscape becomes significantly more complex — and concerning.
Research reveals that more than 70% of children consume caffeine every day, making this a widespread issue that deserves every parent’s attention. Recent research indicates that caffeine-related ER visits, though rare, doubled in middle and high school students between 2017–2023.
Excessive caffeine intake in kids and teens can lead to arrhythmia (when the heart beats too fast, too slow, or with an irregular rhythm), anxiety, hyperactivity, hypertension (high blood pressure), sleep disorders, mood disorders, dehydration and digestive issues, says Dr. Phillip Mote, a board-certified pediatrician with Golisano Pediatrics- Coconut Point.
What We Eat May Never Look the Same
During Biden’s final week in office, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Red No. 3, a synthetic dye that Americans have consumed for nearly a century, would be banned starting in 2027. It cited studies showing that large quantities of the coloring caused cancer in rats. (According to a 1960 law, no food additive that’s carcinogenic in animals can be authorized by the F.D.A.)
Three months later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, went further, calling synthetic dyes “poisonous compounds” that “offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children’s health and development.” He said at a press conference that he’d reached an “understanding” with manufacturers: artificial food colorings would be phased out as early as next year. Our food may soon look very different than it does now.
In the U.S., nine synthetic dyes currently color products as diverse as candy, hot dogs, canned fruit, breakfast cereal, and even salad dressing. The evidence that they make us sick is limited, but in the early two-thousands a study published in The Lancet found a relationship between artificial colorings and hyperactivity in roughly two hundred and fifty children in England, prompting the addition of warning labels on colorants in the European Union. A 2021 report by California health officials said that synthetic dyes were associated with “adverse neurobehavioral outcomes in children,” and that some children are more sensitive than others. Many states are pursuing bans.
Rare Flu Complication Causing Brain Swelling on the Rise in Kids, Study Finds
A rare but deadly flu complication in children — one that causes severe brain swelling and dangerous immune system overreactions — may be survivable with fast, targeted hospital care, according to a Stanford Medicine-led study published July 30 in JAMA.
The condition, known as influenza-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE), affected 41 children across 23 U.S. hospitals between 2023 and 2025.
ANE is extremely rare but often fatal. More than one in four of the children in the study died, and most survivors faced moderate to severe neurological disability in the months that followed. Doctors say flu vaccination is critical for preventing such complications.
