By Mark Schapiro, The Nation, Nov 5
Into the playrooms of children has come the unsettling news: those little red trains and other neat miniatures of the adult world may be coated in paint containing illegally high levels of lead, posing myriad risks to a child’s neurological development. After that discovery prompted a mass recall this past summer, parents will never look at Thomas the Tank Engine the same way again. But the uproar over banned substances and rogue Chinese toy manufacturers has overshadowed an even more troubling issue: the toxins in toys that are perfectly legal. The United States remains one of the few developed countries to permit the import of plastic toys made with polyvinyl chloride additives called phthalates (pronounced tha-lates), which help make toys soft and pliable enough to be twisted or sucked yet durable enough to survive a 1-year-old’s grip. A mounting body of scientific evidence suggests that phthalates impede the production of testosterone and disrupt the sexual development of infant boys.
In the average home, phthalates are everywhere–in shower curtains, shampoo bottles, raincoats and perfumes (to aid adherence to the skin). In hospitals, they’re in medical tubing. A component of that distinct “new car smell” comes from phthalates in the plastic dashboard. The dash becomes more brittle as the car ages because phthalates are slowly migrating into the car’s interior. As they sweat out of the plastic, residue enters the air or, through direct contact, the skin.
You’re invited to a Hometown screening of Two Angry Moms in Weston, CT. Meet the film’s producer, Amy Kalafa of Weston!
When: Tuesday, October 16th @ 7pm
Where: Weston Public Library 56 Norfield Road, Weston, CT 06883
What is happening to the health of our children and how does school food factor in?
The film chronicles what happens when two fed-up moms take on the system and start a grass-roots revolution aimed at establishing programs that safeguard the health of our kids.
Two Angry Moms explores the roles the federal government, corporate interest, school administration and parents play in the feeding of our country’s school kids and the impact it has on their health.
Sustainability is more than a catchword – it is a new kind of thinking, a way to pursue environmental stewardship, economic security and social equity as complementary goals.
More and more, as students pursue degrees at institutions of higher education worldwide, they are exposed to the concepts of sustainable development. Long a hallmark in fi elds such as environmental studies or agriculture, sustainability issues now are cropping up in all walks of course work. Degree programs from Business to Engineering are incorporating discussions of the real-world application of sustainability in their curricula. This reality necessitates more discussion of sustainability in K-12 curricula.
The Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation’s (CELF) mission is to bring about enduring institutional change to education by promoting sustainability as a core K-12 learning framework. Through early education we can equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will lead to a sustainable future for everyone.
Ultimately, we envision our children and future generations understanding the unique and complex systems that support the natural, as well as the human-built environments, and having the knowledge, the desire and the ability to save the integrity of those systems.
Filed under: children
By Amy Linn
Having difficulty getting your kids to eat healthy? Cynthia Sass, a New York City-based registered dietitian, health expert, and author of the book Your Diet is Driving Me Crazy says that by giving kids the information they need they’re going to want to eat right.
“What older children need is a basic understanding about this stuff — about the chemicals and additives and fats and sugars and how it affects their bodies,” she says. “Kids are great critical thinkers.”
The pickiest fifth-grader and the most eye-rolling teen are equally devoted to taking control of their lives, in the food department and all others, she says. Engage their smarts and their natural sense of outrage — about the disodium inosinate in those Doritos and the pesticide residue on that peach — and they’ll become allies in the food fight.
“The key is to avoid trying to trick them, or sway them, or force them to clean their plate or eat in a certain way,” Sass says. Playing the food cop when they’re downing the junky stuff “really pushes them toward those foods.”
By sleuthing with your kids instead of for them — reading labels and finding out together what foods have nasty additives and which fruit juices have no fruit in them and how that strange purple vegetable from the farmers’ market actually tastes — you engage them and bond with them, too.
Sneak preview of the nationally acclaimed movie, Two Angry Moms, featuring the Katonah-Lewisboro School District.
Two Angry Moms is the movie about school food that everyone is talking about. Filmmaker Amy Kalafa follows Dr. Susan Rubin of Chappaqua in their quest for better school food and to improve our children’s health. Come see the movie and learn about the movement!
Katonah Public Library
26 Bedford Road, Katonah
Thursday, September 20, 10:00am & 7:00pm
Suggested donation: $10 suggested(tax-deductible)
Latino farmworker children ages 1 to 6 in North Carolina were found to have, on average, four pesticide metabolites in their urine, according to a just-published study in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Almost 90 percent of the 60 children had three or more pesticide metabolites in their urine, one-third had five or more, and only one child had none.
Metabolites of the highly toxic organophosphate (OP) parathion were found in 90 percent of the children, and chlorpyrifos was found in 83.3 percent. About 2.5 OPs were found, on average, in each child’s urine, indicative of active exposures to each of these pesticides within the last few days, and evidence of the need for cumulative risk assessments of the OPs taking into account all active ingredients in the class and all routes of exposure.
The ubiquitous exposure of farmworker children in North Carolina to highly toxic OPs documented in this study occurred in the summer of 2004, two or more years after the regulatory actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency against parathion and chlorpyrifos under the Food Quality Protection Act. Clearly, use of these OPs remains widespread and continues to expose children to heightened risk of developmental abnormalities, especially those impacting the brain and central nervous system.
read more….(Environmental Health Perspectives)
Filed under: children
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that over 30 percent of the global burden of diseases in children can be attributed to environmental factors and that 13 million deaths could be prevented annually by improving the environment. In addition, WHO said 4 million children die annually because of the bad quality of the air, water and exposure to chemicals and other factors.
WHO released this data from a report, the first ever report which highlights children’s special susceptibility to harmful chemical exposures at different periods of their growth. According to WHO expert Jenny Pronczuc this new volume of the Environmental Health Criteria series, “Principles for Evaluating Health Risks in Children Associated with Exposure to Chemicals” is the most comprehensive work yet undertaken on the scientific principles to be considered in assessing health risks in children. Pronczuc said that the report highlights the fact that in children, the stage in their development when exposure occurs may be just as important as the magnitude of the exposure.
Children are especially vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to environmental factors – and this response may differ according to the different periods of development they are going through.
Air and water contaminants, pesticides in food, lead in soil, as well many other environmental threats which alter the delicate organism of a growing child may cause or worsen disease and induce developmental problems. According to WHO, emerging evidence suggests that an increased risk of certain diseases in adults such as cancer and heart disease can result in part from exposures to certain environmental chemicals during childhood.
Read more (Kuwait News Agency)
A campaign to reduce children’s exposure to pesticides, toxins, and junk foods.
The study, published online in the journal The Lancet, warns of the potential “silent pandemic” that may be a result of the exposure to an array of toxic chemicals in the environment.
Lead author of the study, Philippe Grandjean, of the Harvard School of Public Health, warned that there would be an enormous cost to society if childhood exposure to the many developmental disrupting chemicals was not regulated.
Grandjean warned that once the damage had been done to children’s developing brains, which were much more susceptible to the effects of small doses of chemicals, it was irreversible.
