Nation's Pollution Poses Greater Threat To Children
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Nation's Pollution Poses Greater Threat To Children
Date:
Tue, 16 Jul 2002 09:29:06 -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
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an article dated: Monday July 15th, 2002 from The Pueblo Chieftain entitled: Nation's pollution poses greater threat to children By PETER ROPER.
Americans go through their lives in a chemically clouded world, bombarded on a daily basis with large and small amounts of toxic material that most people are unaware of, according to Dr. Michael McCally of the Oregon Health and Sciences University.
Gasoline fumes and auto exhaust, chemicals in food and water, air pollution from power plants and manufacturing, even pollution from lawn fertilizers and pesticides - all are part of the everyday life of Americans and take a toll, especially on children.
McCally said that federal government standards on toxic exposure are very limited and have traditionally been aimed at measuring toxic materials in adults, not children. While federal regulators are now looking at revising exposure standards to acknowledge the greater danger to young bodies, McCally said the progress comes at a painfully slow pace.
"Children are the most vulnerable to pollution because a small amount of a toxic material, such as lead, does much more harm to a developing youngster than to an adult," he said. "While some chemicals may not be toxic in small amounts to adults, in children they can act as endocrine disrupters, and harm development."
McCally came to Pueblo last week at the invitation of the Sierra Club, Citizens for Clean Air & Water in Pueblo, Better Pueblo, City-County Health Department and the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo. He moved to Oregon recently after serving as the co-director of Center for Children's Health and the Environment at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
He conducted a meeting at the District 60 administration offices last week to discuss the impact of pollution on children.
Anne Cain, chairman of the Sangre de Cristo Group of the Sierra Club, said the purpose of McCally's visit was to raise public awareness of the background pollution that already exists in the environment and the need to prevent additional pollution. The sponsoring groups have been involved in turning the Defense Department away from the Army's original plan to build an incinerator the Pueblo Chemical Depot as the best way to destroy the mustard agent weapons stored there.
The Sierra Club and the Clean Air group have also been active in opposing the construction of the planned GCC Rio Grande cement plant south of the city, arguing that even if the plant operates as licensed, its coal-fired furnace would increase air pollution in the region.
McCally is a veteran of the pollution wars. At Mt. Sinai, he took part in the campaign to have the pesticide diazinon taken off the market because laboratory testing showed it caused cancer and other disease.
"It took 30 years to persuade the federal government to prohibit the use of DDT because of its dangers and it took us three years to get diazinon banned," McCally said. "The shame is that there are more than 80,000 chemicals out there and, unlike the drug or food industries, the chemical industry can bring out a new product without having to prove it is safe."
The public should be concerned because all people carry around a "burden" of toxic chemicals they absorb through food and environmental exposure, he said. For example, most of the toxic chemicals in gasoline fumes do not stay in a person's body for long after they are breathed in. McCally said one cancer-causing ingredient, benzene, does linger in the body.
McCally recently took part in journalist Bill Moyers' television program about the chemical pollution that stems from the polyvinyl chloride industry, the hard-plastic material commonly used in plumbing and other products.
While rigid PVC material, like pipes, does not leach out hazardous materials, that is not the case when industry has added softening materials to make the piping flexible, such as in tubing for intravenous lines in hospitals. The softening agents, called phthalates, are toxic, according to McCally.
During the Moyers program, McCally did an extensive test of the journalist's blood to demonstrate the variety of pollutants the average person carries in their body. While most of the toxics were recorded only in trace amounts, Moyers' blood contained mercury, lead, and phthalates.
"It demonstrated the toxic burden we all accumulate from chronic exposure to pollution in the environment," he said.
One way to reduce that burden in humans, according to McCally, would be to ban the use of petroleum products from fertilizers and food production.
Chieftain photo/Nicole Donnert Dr. Michael McCally: 'Children are the most vulnerable to pollution' http://www.chieftain.com/monday/news/index/article/8
Well Mr. Helliker, Thomas Jefferson once noted: "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." An editorial in the first number of THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST, in 1865 stated: "The proposed decoctions and washes we are well satisfied, in the majority of instances, are useless in application as they are in composition, and if the work of destroying insects is to be accomplished satisfactorily, we feel confident that it will have to be the result of no chemical preparations, but of simple means, directed by a knowledge of the history and habits of the depredators." Yet, "our" government has long ignored the truth and instead has supported and enforced the "legal requirement" that only "registered" chemical preparations (POISONS) can be used to "control" pest problems. I have posted a free pest control book on the web that uses safe and far more effective alternatives, it is entitled: THE BUG STOPS HERE. You can download it for free at: http://www.thebestcontrol.com .
Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten
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