Who Is Responsible For Environmental Child Abuse?

And we may not be too far from the day when the use of household and garden pesticides in the presence of children could be identified as a form of environmental child abuse.

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Subject:   Who Is Responsible For Environmental Child Abuse?----------
Date:       Sun, 27 Aug 2000 09:23:36 -0400
From:        Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
          Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation 

Dear Mr. Helliker, Thought you might like to read an article from The Globe and Mail: http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20000824/COENVIRO.html entitled: We're allowing environmental child abuse. A report released this week and changes to an Ontario law put new responsibility on us to protect future generations. TREVOR HANCOCK - Thursday, August 24, 2000.

Is what we are doing to the environment a form of child abuse? Richard Jackson, director of the U.S. National Center for Environmental Health, has said, "People who wouldn't dream of abusing a child think nothing of giving their children and grandchildren an environment that has been abused."

I wouldn't suggest -- at least, not yet -- that either the manufacturers of products known or believed to cause harm to children, or the federal and provincial governments whose job it is to regulate them, should be formally charged with child abuse.

But a review of recent amendments to Ontario's Child and Family Services Act (OCFSA), and a dire environmental report
released Tuesday by the Canadian Institute of Child Health, does raise the question.

The act now requires people to report suspected child maltreatment by "the person having charge of the child." That maltreatment includes both actual physical harm and "a risk that the child is likely to suffer physical harm resulting from the person's failure to adequately . . . protect the child."

It also extends the definition of child maltreatment to include both actual emotional harm and the "risk that the child is likely to suffer emotional harm . . . demonstrated by serious . . . anxiety, depression or delayed development" where "there are reasonable grounds to believe" that this harm resulted from a "failure to act . . . on the part of . . .the person having charge of the child."

This is a broad definition, and indeed may be broad enough to encompass some aspects of the concept of environmental child abuse that I'm advancing. For example, given the evidence of the impact of second-hand smoke on infants and children, one could certainly argue that smoking in a house where children live is a form of child abuse. Indeed, the presence of a smoker in a household has already been used as grounds for refusing adoption and for denying custody in divorce cases. And we may not be too far from the day when the use of household and garden pesticides in the presence of children could be identified as a form of environmental child abuse.

Certainly, the sanctioning by boards of education of the use of pesticides in schools is a clear example of the "person having charge of the child" creating a situation where there is a risk that children may suffer physical harm, given what we know about the relationship between pesticides and environmental sensitivity, allergies, and neurological, immunological and other health effects, including cancer. The Institute of Child Health report found a 25-per-cent increase in the rate of childhood cancers in the past 25 years.

Surely, any board of education that approves the use of pesticides in schools should be reported to the Children's Aid Society (CAS), at least in Ontario. Indeed, failure to make such a report by a professional (including teachers and physicians) who knows of or suspects such a situation, under the new OCFSA, would open that professional up to a fine of $1,000.

However, I'm not concerned so much with these individual acts of environmental child abuse and their potential legal implications, as I am with our collective societal contribution to environmental abuse that will, in turn, have profound consequences for our children and grandchildren.

Clearly, the principal target of the OCFSA is the parent or those acting in loco parent is. But when it comes to potentially harmful chemicals to which children may be exposed -- such as chlorpyrifos, a common pesticide that has been in use for decades but now is being removed from the market because of evidence that it may cause neurological damage in children -- who has charge of the child? It cannot be the parent or daycare worker or teacher if they are using a product that both the manufacturer and the regulator have approved. So surely, in a very real sense, it is the manufacturer and the regulator who have charge of the child.

Under the terms of the OCFSA, then, it seems reasonable to suggest that the physician, other professional, or indeed any ordinary citizen, must report to the CAS if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a child is likely to suffer physical harm or emotional harm, including serious delayed development, as a result of the failure of a manufacturer or regulator to adequately protect the child. Surely, the failure to immediately remove a product when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that it might cause physical harm to a child constitutes such a failure. And the repeated failure to remove such products constitutes "a pattern of neglect in . . . protecting the child," which is also a basis for a mandatory report to the CAS.

Just how far should we extend this argument?

Hard to say. Can anyone seriously doubt that Inuit children born with a high body burden of persistent organic pollutants might suffer physical harm and/or delayed development? Or that some children exposed to the levels of urban smog we experience on a regular basis in and around Canada's cities will suffer from asthma or other health problems? Or that children for several generations to come, for whom we surely bear some responsibility, will likely suffer both physical and emotional harm, including serious anxiety and depression, as a result of the depletion of resources, the warming of the climate, the destruction of habitats, the extinction of species and other damage we are wreaking on the Earth's ecosystems? 

In short, we are abusing our children's environment and in the process we are, in effect, abusing our children and grandchildren.

We are reducing their opportunities for a long and healthy life, undermining the ecological systems on which they will depend for sustenance and bringing them into the world with a body burden of persistent organic pollutants.

If these activities do not constitute environmental child abuse, I don't know what does. 

As a society, we can no longer afford an economic system that provides us with excessive wealth and instant gratification at the expense of future generations' health and well being. Only through a massive transformation of our economic system to one that is fully sustainable in environmental, social and human health terms can we hope to provide our children with the same or better level of health, well being, and quality of life that we enjoy today.

As a society we are collectively responsible for what amounts to environmental child abuse.

It is time to take this responsibility seriously -- at least as seriously as we take other forms of child abuse -- and begin to make changes in our production and use of chemicals, our use of resources, and our way of life that will ensure a healthy environment for our children and their descendants. Trevor Hancock is a public-health physician and health-promotion consultant. He is chair of the board of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Well Mr. Helliker, it really is time for you to take your responsibility to protect the people and not the POISON industry profits more seriously. POISONS do not "protect" they KILL! You need to begin to protect the children and not to POISON them. As long as you continue to demand that all of your trained, licensed pest control professionals may only use your "registered" POISONS to "control" pest problems - you more than they are responsible for the subsequent child abuse, contamination, sickness and death your "registered" POISONS and "regulatory" actions have caused! In addition to the inherent dangers of using your "registered" POISONS - I continue to point out to you that after using BILLIONS of tons of just your active POISON ingredients for over 50 years --- these POISONS have never "controlled" even one pest! Safe alternatives work far better to control pest problems - BUT, as soon as anyone comes up with, sells, delivers and/or uses any safe and far more effective alternative that actually CONTROLS pest problems, you say such activities and/or products are "illegal/unregistered pesticides" and you vigorously attack and stop any such activity. If it is against the federal law to say that even the labeled use of any of your "registered" POISONS is "safe" --- How can you say that any SAFE material is a POISON/pesticide?

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten

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