Dear Mr. Helliker, I
thought you might like to read the following articles:
Pollution Kills Thousands of Children
NEW YORK
,
New York
,
May 10, 2002
(ENS) - About 5,500 children die each day around the world from diseases
caused by polluted air, water and food, concludes a new study released
Thursday by three United Nations agencies. The report details the deadly
threat that environmental degradation poses to the Earth's most vulnerable
citizens.
Hundreds of children paraded through the streets of
Manhattan
on Wednesday in a march for child rights - which include the right to a clean
environment. (Photo by Donna DeCesare © UNICEF)
Environmental contamination gives rise to a number of
diseases, including diarrhea and acute respiratory infections - two of the
leading causes of child mortality - charges the report, "Children in the
New Millennium: Environmental Impact on Health."
The study notes that thousands of children continue to
die every day from pollution related diseases, despite improvements made over
the past 10 years in both children's well being and the environment.
"We have made great strides over the last
decade," said Carol Bellamy, executive director of the UN Children's Fund
(UNICEF). "Children are healthier today. There is more access to clean
water."
Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF. (Photo
courtesy UNICEF)
"But these disturbing figures show we have barely
started to address some of the main problems," Bellamy added. "Far
too many children are dying from diseases that can be prevented through access
to clean water and sanitation."
The 140 page report was produced by UNICEF, the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It was
released in conjunction with the three day United Nations (UN) General
Assembly special session on children, which opened in
New York
on Wednesday.
The conference, attended by more than 60 heads of state
or government and 170 national delegations, aims to place children at the top
of the world's agenda and foster more investment in essential social services
for them. One of its main goals is to increase household access to hygienic
sanitation facilities and affordable and safe drinking water.
The UN report identifies a number of environmental
problems that directly affect children, such as high levels of toxic chemicals
and the degradation and depletion of natural resources. For example, lead
contamination in the environment - much of it from leaded gasoline - causes
permanent neurological and developmental disorders in children.
A girl delegate at the Children's Forum. (Photo by Susan
Markisz © UNICEF)
Millions of children work in agriculture, putting them at
high risk of pesticide poisoning. Children are also disproportionately
vulnerable to global environmental problems, such as the impact of climate
change, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the loss of the planet's
biological diversity, the report warns.
According to WHO, almost one third of the global disease
burden can be attributed to environmental risk factors. More than 40 percent
of this burden falls on children under five years of age, even though they
account for just 10 percent of the world's population.
A major contributing factor to these diseases is
malnutrition, which affects around 150 million children and undermines their
immune systems.
Malnutrition and diarrhea form a vicious cycle. The
organisms that cause diarrhea harm the walls of children's digestive tracts,
which prevents them absorbing their food, causing even greater malnutrition -
and vulnerability to disease.
Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of WHO.
(Photo courtesy WHO)
"People are most vulnerable in their youngest
years," said WHO director general Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland. "This
means that children must be at the center of our response to unhealthy
environments."
The report warns that the public has little awareness of
children's special vulnerability to environmental health risks. Klaus Töpfer,
UNEP's executive director, called for international action to raise awareness
of the problem.
"I am convinced that we need to elevate children's
environmental health issues on the international agenda, both through the
General Assembly's special session on children and then the World Summit on
Sustainable Development," said Töpfer. "We should recognize that
realizing children's rights and managing environmental challenges are mutually
reinforcing goals."
The report calls for increased national investment in
early child care, including focusing on the immediate environments of
children, like homes, schools, and communities. One notable success in many
countries is the transition to unleaded fuel, which helps eliminate lead from
the environment.
Gabriela Azurduy Arrieta of
Bolivia
presents the recommendations of the Children's Forum to delegates at the UN
General Assembly's Special Session on Children on Wednesday. (Photo by Susan
Markisz © UNICEF)
Töpfer added that he hoped the new study "will
inspire everyone who cares about children to take decisive action that will
improve both their health and the environment."
In the
United States
, a new bill was introduced Thursday that would increase federal research on
hormone disrupting chemicals, among the most persistent and insidious
environmental pollutants. Hormone disruptors are synthetic chemicals that
block, mimic or otherwise interfere with naturally produced hormones that
control how an organism develops and functions.
Since the 1970s, the incidence of childhood cancers,
learning disabilities, autism, diabetes, early puberty, and abnormal penile
development has skyrocketed. Evidence linking these disorders with exposure to
hormone disrupting chemicals has continued to mount.
"What is especially troubling is that children are
exposed to these chemicals in the womb and shortly after birth - periods of
rapid development," said Dr. Theo Colborn, director of the World Wildlife
Fund's wildlife and contaminants program.
Representative Louise Slaughter introduced a bill
Thursday to fund studies of hormone disrupting chemicals. (Photo courtesy
Office of the Representative)
Representative Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat, has
sponsored the Hormone Disruption Research Act of 2002, which would authorize
up to $500 million for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
(NIEHS) to conduct a five year research program on hormone disruption.
NIEHS would also be required to provide public reports on
the extent to which hormone disrupting chemicals pose a threat to human health
and the environment.
"This legislation is long overdue. Not one chemical
in use today has been adequately tested for its ability to undermine the
construction of children's bodies and brains," said Dr. Colborn.
"There is an urgent need to support innovative research designed to
identify hazards that traditional toxicology has missed."
ARTICLE FROM: National Anxiety Center
Environmental Corruption: A Cascade of Lies
By Alan Caruba
Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute
and a former senior policy analyst for the US Department of State, recently
took note of sanctions applied to Steven R. Arnold, a former researcher at the
Tulane
University
Center
for Bioenvironmental Research. The Federal Office of Research Integrity found
that
Arnold
had "committed scientific misconduct by intentionally falsifying the
research results published in the Journal Science and by providing falsified
and fabricated materials to investigating officials."
His punishment? He will be unable to receive federal
research funding for five years. Avery called it "one of the most
dramatic scientific frauds of modern times," noting that the
Tulane
Center
said it found that various pesticides, safe when tested individually, were
1,000 times more dangerous when tested together. It raised the specter of
modern agriculture’s chemicals undermining the health of the human
population and the natural ecology through a blind spot in our regulatory
testing." And it was a lie.
This is part of the campaign of endless lies designed to
secure the ban of every single pesticide and herbicide that protects human
health against insect and rodent predators, and the vast food crops produced
by American farmers. In 1996 a book was published, "Our Stolen Future:
Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? – A Scientific
Detective Story." Written by Theo Colbert, even the author her book
admitted it was based on mere suspicions. It has been cited, however, as proof
of yet another bogus threat conjured up by environmentalists. "
The book speculated that man-made chemicals were causing
ailments ranging from cancer to attention deficit disorder by disrupting our
endocrine systems," noted Avery. The book’s forward was written by then
Vice President Al Gore. When
Arnold
’s falsified research was published in 1996, Carol Browner, the
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said, "The new
study is the strongest evidence to date that combinations of estrogenic
materials may be potent enough to significantly increase the risk of breast
cancer, prostate cancer, birth defects and other major health concerns."
As we now know, there is no such evidence, except that
purposely created to further the goal of the environmental movement to end the
use of pesticides and herbicides. Beginning with Rachel Carson’s bogus and
discredited "science" in "Silent Spring", this attack on
beneficial chemicals has never ceased.
In a similar fashion, Michael Bellesile’s book,
"Arming America" was seized upon by gun-control advocates as having
demolished "the myth" that individuals have the right to gun
ownership. The book asserted that private gun ownership was uncommon in early
America
. It turns out that the author deliberately misinterpreted Colonial documents,
misquoted early federal laws, distorted historical accounts, and cited
San Francisco
records that experts agree were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
The willingness to lie regarding environmental issues was
revealed in December when it was found that federal and state wildlife
biologists had planted false evidence of a rare cat species in two national
forests, the
Gifford
Pinchot
National Forest
and
Wenatchee
National Forest
in
Washington
State
. This is the same forest area that the Earth Liberation Front has recently
boasted of "spiking" trees in order to do injury to lumberjacks
culling trees for purposes of forest management.
Now comes another report of "bio-fraud" where a
Washington
State
fish and wildlife biologist is alleged to have asked a taxidermist for grizzly
bear hair samples in March of last year. The use of such hair samples could
have been used to taint a study of grizzly bear habitat, ultimately affecting
recreation, timber, mining, road construction and other uses of throughout the
State. Officials are beginning to wonder just how much of this kind of
deliberate deception has been at work at the state and federal level to
achieve the environmental goals of shutting down essential industries and the
recreational use of public lands. One is reminded of the "Spotted
Owl" hoax that devastated the timber industry throughout the
Pacific Northwest
.
The cascade of lies about everything environmental
should, by now, have convinced the public that
US
government officials responsible for setting national policies and
environmental groups seeking to determine what those policies should be cannot
be trusted. The public, however, has rarely paid any attention to anything
than the lies published by a compliant and complacent mainstream media that
has fully adopted the goals of the environmental and animal rights movements.
The costs of these policies are astronomical. Billions of
dollars are wasted on wasteful programs said to "protect" the
environment. Billions of dollars are going to be allocated to States and
environmental groups to put more and more land aside from any use. Late on the
evening of December 20th, the Senate, without any public debate or a recall
vote, passed S-990, The American Wildlife Enhancement Act of 2001. We will
never know who voted for this act. This was the same tactic used to pass the
UN Convention on Desertification. Now $600 million in taxpayer dollars will be
given out for "the acquisition of an area of land or water that is
suitable or capable of being made suitable for feeding, resting or breeding by
wildlife." Translation: Any property can be designated for virtual
seizure. One can only pray the President will veto this full-scale attack on
property rights in
America
.
This is how environmental groups achieve their goals.
They are goals based in a consuming hatred of humankind and its need for food
and shelter. They are goals that are intended to undermine and destroy
America
’s economic power, based on access to its vast natural resources. They are
goals intended to strip Americans of the most fundamental right of
self-defense. They are the goals of those who believe they are morally
superior to you and I, and therefore have the right to subvert the truth to
achieve total control over our lives and our nation.
While Americans look to the
Middle East
and elsewhere, fearful of terrorist organizations intent on harming our lives
and our society, they continue to ignore the internal enemies who, by stealth
and deception, work to destroy the progress of real science that protects and
extends our lives, and to undermine our most fundamental Constitutional
protections.
If we lose this struggle, it will be because of our
inertia and indifference. The environmentalists, animal rights, and gun
control advocates are counting on that.
© 2002 Alan Caruba. First
North American Serial Rights. All
other rights reserved.
Well Mr. Helliker, it is
your choice, who do you believe?
Respectfully,
Stephen L. Tvedten
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information on pesticides, please email us at list@safe2use.com.
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