(Provided photo)

Parents have been heating up with their questions about climate change and how it might be affecting the health of their children.

Let me see if I can air out some information on this important topic.

As glaciers are shrinking, sea levels are rising and fossil fuels are being burned, the earth’s temperature goes up, and these worsening changes to our climate and planet directly affect children’s health.

If we want children to play outdoors and get the exercise they need, we need to consider air quality. As it worsens, air quality can trigger more and more breathing difficulties in children with asthma.

Natural climate-related events continue to increase like hurricanes and wildfires, such as the recent ones in California. The anxiety and stress these can cause in the emotional wellbeing of our children is undeniable. Thus, the connection between climate change and children’s physical and mental health is omnipresent.

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What can we do to help improve the climate we live in?

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¯ While it will take major changes to shift toward cleaner energy and away from polluting energy sources, there are small, but important choices parents and children can make every day that have an impact on their health and the health of those living in their communities.

¯ For example, we can help reduce energy consumption by turning off lights after leaving a room and reducing our carbon footprint by encouraging our children and ourselves as adults to walk, bike, carpool or use public transit rather than drive to work or school every day.

¯ We can spend more time outdoors and advocate for more green space with trees and shade to reduce extreme heat especially in urban areas.

¯ We can also adopt a healthier nutritional profile involving local, fresh, and plant-based foods, eating less red meat and avoiding processed foods, such as sugars and processed meats.

¯ We can also talk about climate change with our children and how their voices are more powerful than they may think they are since they are the next generation of adults to protect our planet.

Even if the climate crisis seems out of control, I hope all of you, whether or not you have children, stay hopeful and show how you, your child and your community can work together to clean up our air and water through some of the simple strategies I have shared.

By taking actions such as I described, hopefully we can all create a climate of change that will make this planet environmentally safer — and in doing so we can then truly be First with our Kids.

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Lewis First, MD, is Chief of Pediatrics at The University of Vermont Children’s Hospital and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. You can also catch “First with Kids” weekly on WOKO 98.9FM and NBC5.