More plastic in the oceans, found at greater depths than thought, would mean a bigger threat to environmental—and possibly human—health
By Erica Cirino on February 1, 2017
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
2/3/17
2/9/15
1/8/14
Commitment to Protect Children's Health from Environmental Hazards ("Jerusalem Statement"), International Conference on Children's Health and Environment, 20-22 November 2013
Jerusalem Statement Commitment to Protect Children's Health from Environmental Hazards
We, participants in the International Conference on Children’s Health and Environment, have come together in Jerusalem, the city of belief for so many people in the world, on 20-22 November 2013 to commit ourselves to work jointly towards the protection of children's health and safety from environmental risks. These risks may result from exposures that occur before conception, in the womb, during birth and thereafter in the cradle, the home, the school, the wider community, and for millions, from child labour. This Statement builds on previous statements asserting the intrinsic, natural moral rights of children, including the World Health Organization Alma Ata "Health for All" Declaration (1978) to protect and promote the health of all people, and the United Nations' Convention of the Rights of the Child signed on 20 November 1989.
WE RECOGNIZE
In many parts of the world unacceptable dangers to children have occurred from war, child labour, slavery, trafficking, sexual exploitation, terror, torture, genocide, execution, and massive destruction of habitat.
These dangers result from human choice and bystander indifference and are crimes against humanity; That most diseases in children are not inborn, but linked to environmental exposures from waterborne, airborne, foodborne, vector-borne, and physical agents, many from invisible natural or man-made sources;
That children are most often more vulnerable to such exposures than adults, with the most critical effects on fetuses and babies;
That the risks come not only from acute high exposures, but from chronic low level exposures to lead, pesticides, heavy metals, solvents, and radiation —all too often at levels well below regulatory thresholds; Such exposures impair health, growth and lifetime development and body systems function;
That environmental factors acting in early life have consequences that become manifest as an altered disease risk in later life. Babies receive from their mother a forecast of the environment they will encounter after birth and modify their metabolism, whole body physiology, and growth trajectory to maximize postnatal survival.
If environmental exposure after birth is not the same as the one encountered prenatally, this may lead to epigenetic mis-programming, leading to developmental disorders or diseases;
That as emerging countries rapidly industrialize, children are being exposed to hazardous substances at levels now disappearing in richer countries; That not only in developing, but also in developed countries hazardous exposures among children remain;
That primary prevention is a crucial, cost effective and a key strategy for protecting children from adverse effects at all stages of their lifecycle;
That there is a need to evaluate effects in children of new emerging environmental health risks, such as exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals and other agents, to compounds related to nanotechnology; but precautionary strategies to reduce these exposures need not await complete answers from research;
That protecting the integrity of the life-sustaining systems of Planet Earth is essential to a sustainable strategy of protection and promotion of children's health;
That countermeasures against global climate change and loss of biodiversity are essential to sustainable strategies for promoting children's health and environment.
WE AFFIRM
That children are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of many chemical, biological and physical agents, as well as mental stressors in the social environment.
Children should be protected from injury, poisoning, stress and hazards in the environments where they are born, live, learn, play, and grow;
That in many regions of the world children’s environmental health hazards have been greatly aggravated by war and conflict, incitement to hate, repression, and poverty;
That all children have the right to safe, clean and supportive environments that ensure their survival, growth, development, healthy life and well-being;
That there is a moral and ethical responsibility of decision-makers to protect this right—everywhere, but especially in high threat situations such as war, slavery and child labour.
That the recognition of the forgoing right is essential as the world moves toward the adoption of sustainable development practices;
That the international community should be more active in addressing the outstanding issues of children’s environmental health throughout the world, especially in the cases requiring urgent measures for decontamination, remediation, and rehabilitation;
That children require easy and safe access to healthy outdoor spaces to play as essential to their health and development;
That it is the responsibility of communities, assisted by local, national and international authorities and policy makers, national and international organizations, and professionals dealing with health, environment, water, energy, transport, agriculture and education issues to act. Such actions include: promoting the recognition, assessment, prevention and mitigation of physical, chemical and biological hazards, stress and social hazards that threaten children's health and quality of life;
That it is the responsibility of those actors in children’s health to assess, promote, develop and monitor solutions to all hazards, especially ways to avoid hazards in the first place, and ensure precautionary strategies anticipating these risks;
That precautionary strategies need to weigh difficult choices between alternative strategies.
WE COMMIT OURSELVES
To require policy makers to recognize their moral and ethical responsibility to protect children from threats in high risk situations and in dangerous places everywhere, but especially in high threat situations such as war, genocide, slavery and child labour;
To increase the awareness of policy makers, governmental and non- governmental agencies, the industry and the public opinion, that investing in prevention of children's environmental and safety hazards is greatly cost- effective, convenient and beneficial for the society, economic growth and better future of mankind;
To provide children and their parents with knowledge about and access to safe water and air, adequate sanitation, safe food, appropriate shelter, and protection from injury;
To encourage industry, manufacturers, communication systems, planners, and agriculturists to ensure safe production, use and disposal of chemicals and other hazardous or potentially hazardous products or agents;
To promote substitution policies by phasing out hazardous chemicals in commonly-used consumer products;
To promote development and dissemination of international standards, criteria, and parameters of a safe environment;
To educate children’s health care providers to incorporate the pediatric environmental history taking as a part of routine practice;
To set an example by working to create more sustainable health care and research facilities;
To strengthen research to identify problem areas in children's environmental health and safety in order to set priorities and allocate resources; and evaluate the efficacy of interventions and their consequences;
To disseminate knowledge about the special vulnerability of children to our peers, colleagues, the community and policy makers;
To develop and/or strengthen partnerships at the local, regional, national and trans-national levels among pediatric, nursing, environmental and education associations and the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Health Organization and other governmental, nongovernmental and international organizations for the protection of children's environmental health and safety;
To promote new approaches for safe and effective therapeutic methods of medical interventions in cases of childhood poisoning by heavy metals, pesticides, and other agents, including targeting the biochemical sites of actions in addition to removing the agents from the body;
To advocate and take action in promotion and protection of children's health environment and safety at all levels, including political, administrative and community levels;
To explore the possibilities of new approaches to protect children more in decision making processes;
And to create mechanisms for rapid early response to emerging threats.
Jerusalem, November, 2013
1/17/13
FLAME RETARDANTS
We send out this short piece on flame retardants to explain why they are dangerous, where they are in our environment, and why Environment and Human Health, Inc. is working on a project to change the policy to better protect the public's health from exposures to them. "In 1977, The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced the ban of children's pajamas containing the flame-retardant commonly known as Tris because it was carcinogenic. The pajama use of Tris was banned - but unbelievably, it is still being used today in baby products such as nursing pillows, car-seats, crib mattresses, high-chairs, etc." Flame retardants have become ubiquitous in our environment.
Nancy Alderman, President, Environment and Human Health, Inc. http://www.ehhi.org http://ehhijournal.org
1191 Ridge Road, North Haven, CT 06473 (phone) 203-248-6582
Recent research suggests that
chemicals used as flame-retardants are rapidly building up in the
bodies of people and wildlife around the world. The concentrations of
these chemicals in tissues appear to be approaching levels in American
women that could harm the developing nervous systems of fetuses,
infants and children.
In the United States there has
been no action to regulate flame-retardants in a way that would
protect human health, and instead their use continues to rise. About
half of the 135 million pounds of flame-retardants used worldwide in
2001 were applied to products in North America.
Scientists who specialize in
human tissue body burdens say that they haven't seen a chemical build
up in human bodies and the environment as quickly as that of some
flame-retardants in almost half a century. The flame-retardants are as
potent and long lasting as PCB's and DDT- chemicals that began to
accumulate in the environment and human tissues in the 1950's and were
banned in the 1970's. Even if many flame-retardants were banned
today, they would endure in the environment for decades.
In 1977, The U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission (CPSC) announced the ban of children's clothing
containing the flame-retardant commonly known as Tris because it was
carcinogenic. The pajama use of Tris was banned - but
unbelievably, it is still being used today in baby products that are
made with polyurethane foam - such as nursing pillows, car-seats, crib
mattresses, high-chairs, etc. To be exposing our smallest children is
truly outrageous..
Animal studies have shown that
flame-retardants affect thyroid hormone functions and can impair the
developing central nervous system and brain. In 1999, Swedish
researchers discovered much greater amounts in human breast milk than
had been detected twenty-five years earlier. Subsequent studies have
found an even sharper rise in U.S. women, leading some researchers to
conclude that flame retardants levels in North Americans are 10 to 20
times higher than in Europeans and are doubling at a rate of every
four to six years. This has raised concern among many scientists and
environmental health advocates.
Flame-retardants can cross the
placenta, exposing the fetus. Infants are also exposed to
flame-retardants through breast milk. Children take in
flame-retardants from many sources and these will persist in their
bodies though adulthood.
Researchers say the effects on
children are likely to be subtle - not mental retardation or
disability, but measurable changes in children's intelligence, memory
hyperactivity and hearing. "We're concerned about learning and
memory and some behavioral effects and hearing loss," Birnbaum
said.
Dr. Linda Birnbaum, the EPA's
director of toxicology, said, "there is no question that the
chemicals are altering thyroid hormones. Altering thyroid hormones
during fetal development can affect how the brain
functions."
What disturbs scientists the
most are that some flame-retardants have striking similarities to
PCB's which were widely used as insulating fluids in electrical
transformers until they were banned in the 1970's because they were
collecting in the tissues of people and wildlife.
11/9/12
Another Need in the Aftermath of Sandy: Toxic Soup Testing
In
Hurricane Sandy's aftermath, government agencies have acted quickly to
save lives and restore power and other basic essentials for those
impacted by the storm. As recovery continues, federal and state agencies
will be addressing another growing problem: the noxious materials such
as oil, toxic chemicals, and raw sewage that the storm has released into
waterways. The health of residents and first responders will depend on
knowing what's around them so they can take proper precautions and
mitigate risks.
12/16/11
The Grassfed Primer
Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) is a national nonprofit organization that audits, certifies and supports farmers raising their animals according to the highest welfare standards, outdoors on pasture or range.
We published The Grassfed Primer to help people to identify and purchase meat and dairy products from real grassfed farms. We hope that it helps to explain the problems with feedlot farming systems, but also the significant solutions that real grassfed farming can offer, and why it is important to choose a "grassfed" label that really means what it says.
Find out more about real grassfed farming and Animal Welfare Approved: download The Grassfed Primer here.
Called a “badge of honor for farmers” and the “gold standard,” AWA has come to be the most highly regarded food label when it comes to animal welfare, pasture-based farming and sustainability.
All AWA standards, policies and procedures are available on the AWA website, making it one of the most transparent certifications available.
AWA’s online directory of farms, restaurants and products enables the public to search for AWA farms, restaurants and products by zipcode, keywords, products and type of establishment.
Visit www.AnimalWelfareApproved.org/product-search
Animal Welfare Approved
1007 Queen Street | Alexandria | VA 22314
(800) 373-8806
www.AnimalWelfareApproved.org
2/8/10
ACT FOR A HEALTHY TOMORROW: A Valentine
A Valentine v. 11/2010
to raise awareness of the intimate connection between our health and the quality of our environment and the need to work for public integrity, health security and human rights.
to raise awareness of the intimate connection between our health and the quality of our environment and the need to work for public integrity, health security and human rights.
Watch our children grow
Ensure each child a healthy start
Safe and happy, strong and smart
Protect their water, soil, food and air
Show the kids how much you care
We always reap what we sow
Stop lead, perc, hexavalent chromium, and TCE,
dioxins and furans, and PBDEs,
DEHP, formaldehyde, and 2,4-D
Think safe kids, safe food, safe air, safe bees!
Stop asthma, brain damage, and cancer
Pollution prevention is the answer:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
12/11/08
ASTHMA AT SCHOOL
You may want to read the AASA material http://www.aasa.org/focus/content.cfm?ItemNumber=1951
 | Powerful Practices: An Assessment Tool for School Districts Addressing the Needs of Students with Asthma (PDF, October 2005) This checklist, developed by AASA and its partner school districts, is intended for school administrators to use to help identify areas of asthma management the district is already doing well, as well as areas in which to focus more energy. |
 | Asthma Wellness: Keeping Children with Asthma in School and Learning (PDF, Spring 2003) The Spring 2003 issue of School Governance & Leadership covers asthma, indoor air quality, asthma management, policies and procedures in schools, and liability and litigation issues. |
12/8/08
Your Environmental Defense Plan
Memo to School Administrators:
Think of an IAQ Team as your best Environmental Defense Plan
Ellie Goldberg, M.Ed., www.healthy-kid.info
c. 1999, v. 2007
I am an advocate for the growing population of students with asthma and I know that a school that is safe for children with asthma is a safer, more productive, healthier place for everyone.
I urge anyone involved in the design, building, renovation, maintenance, management or inspection of schools to remember that schools are special because they house children. And today, anywhere from 4 to 20% or more of the students in a given school have asthma.
The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program‘s (NAEPP) questionnaire: How Asthma Friendly Is Your School? asks:
- Does the school maintain good indoor air quality?
- Does it reduce or eliminate allergens and irritants that can make asthma worse?
If the answer to any of its questions is no, NAEPP warns that students are facing obstacles to asthma control and their attendance and progress in school will suffer.
Asthma is an inflammatory condition of the airways. Inflammation is the body’s response to injury. Having asthma is like having a sunburn in your airways. Preventing and managing asthma requires protecting the airways from the allergens and irritants that cause and aggravate the inflammation.
A sixth grader explains how a school with moldy carpets made him sick in an award winning school essay and exhibit titled, “The Effect of Carpet on Students.”
"Allergies make you feel horrible. Sinus and lung congestion, headaches, runny nose, breathing problems, sore throat, coughing and fatigue make it difficult for you to concentrate. You are not happy when you have allergies and are congested. Being sick affects your behavior…Some medicines you take make you sleepy, dopey, irritable, disoriented, or hyper which affects your concentration. If your are absent from school, you get behind in your work and miss the teacher’s instruction."
While there are no statistics on children’s school-related asthma, one government occupational health survey (1) listed elementary and secondary schools as "industries with a high prevalence of asthma" (12.0%), even higher than automotive repair shops (9.2%).
The MA Department of Public Health's newsletter, Lung Disease Bulletin (2) (December, 1996) highlights teachers who developed asthma as a result of school conditions that included inadequate ventilation, water-damaged moldy carpets, decaying organic debris in the ventilation system, and inappropriate application of pesticides to carpets. The toll from mismanaged renovations in occupied buildings is even higher.
As students and staff at the Pollard School in Needham (MA) learned first hand, going to school amid demolition, construction and renovation presents a variety of serious threats to health and safety and can leave a legacy of disruption, illness and disability that continues for years.
It is obvious that bad air at school sabotages a child’s education, making it harder to learn and making it impossible to live well. Students (and teachers) who use bronchodilators to keep their airways open in unhealthy environments are setting themselves up for more serious long term lung damage.
I urge school officials who ignore or minimize complaints of health problems to remember the 1937 Texas School Disaster where students and teachers endured headaches, red teary eyes, nausea, and breathing difficulties for weeks as gas fumes filled the school. On March 18, 1937, a gas explosion killed 319 students, teachers and visitors. (Victims identified as of 2007)
Those lives were a terrible price to pay for the false economies that led to short cuts in design and inadequate ventilation at the expense of health and safety.
It is not hard to see how ignoring air quality concerns at school creates an acute threat and a cumulative disadvantage for students and wastes millions of education and health care dollars. We may never know how many points children lose taking MCAS or SAT tests in rooms with high levels of CO2 (carbon dioxide) or moldy carpets but we know that that these schools are not safe environments for teaching and learning.
The logic is simple. Children are required by law to go to school. Therefore parents assume that schools will be safe for their children. They rely on school officials to anticipate reasonably foreseeable dangers and take steps to prevent harm, for example, from asbestos, solvents or pesticides. Building "experts" that find levels of contaminants below OSHA standards and therefore consider them acceptable for schools ignore the special vulnerabilities of children.
They also ignore the fact that schools have additional responsibilities to children under laws defining special education and disability rights. Schools cannot simply reject or ignore children because they have asthma. Schools must be accessible to all children, including those more vulnerable than typical children to injury or illness because they have health conditions such as asthma, allergies or learning disabilities.
To protect the right of all children to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, schools must reduce barriers to attendance including conditions that cause preventable illness. They must work to prevent or change conditions which create a disadvantage or disparate impact on any child or group of children.
Also consider employees with asthma. In 1996, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination awarded $200,000 to a school nurse in Burlington, MA because poor ventilation and contaminants in the school exacerbated her asthma and a school official had repeatedly disregarded her physician's advice to install a window in her office. The judgment concluded that “a reasonable person would have found such conditions intolerable” and that “a reasonable person would not have remained at a job which endangered her health with no hope of improvement.” Her case was strong because she had detailed notes of her symptoms, her physician’s recommendations, and the school’s ventilation and contamination problems. Most significant, she had a copy of every notice she had given to school officials giving them an opportunity to address her concerns.
I guarantee you, if you look at your school through the viewpoint of students and teachers with asthma, you will never set your standards for health and safety to high. You will never betray the trust placed in you by your colleagues and your community and you will save money at the same time.
YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE PLAN
1. Be an IAQ team player. Think wholistically. Recognize that the whole school is an integrated interdependent living system. Even installing a copy machine without planning to exhaust contaminants exposes people to ozone and other irritating and toxic emissions.
2. Keep good records. Encourage health monitoring and hazards reporting by staff, students and parents. They are the most cost-effective sources of information about a school. Encourage staff and students to make regular reports about comfort, symptoms and hazards and poor conditions. This information can help you map symptom, time, and location patterns that are more helpful than air quality tests in pin-pointing poor conditions that cause health problems.
3. Old inspection reports are a gold mine of information. Study them. Every school system has accumulated a vareity of useful documents such as school maintenance records and service contracts, fire and safety inspections, pest control service records and reports from such organizations such as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation committee. They could save every school money wasted on useless tests and inspections, hasty repairs, and poorly managed renovations not to mention the expense of litigation and liability after a crisis.
Peabody (MA) High school teachers and students suffered serious disabling illnesses and the district paid tens of thousands of dollars for inspections when old inspection reports in the files had identified the same serious building problems and hazards years earlier.
4. Put a high priority on regular facility audits designed to save money by preventing deterioration and waste. Adopting a school-wide Integrated Pest Management program, for example, not only makes everyone in a school aware and responsible for keeping the school clean, dry and in good repair, It puts a priority on promptly correcting poor conditions and poor sanitation to prevent rodent and insect problems. It prevents damage and deterioration and avoids the risks of using pesticides.
A pest control expert in one Newton school pointed out how the district could have saved thousands of dollars if someone had simply re-attached a down spout that was laying on the ground. Conducting an inspection during a rain storm he noted a waterfall over a courtyard door that was fragmented and green with mold. The eave over the door was bent and the water was funneling down, splashing on the step at the bottom of the door. The frame gaped. The wall and the base of the door was rotted. Inside, behind a heating panel, there were dead mice on glue boards. Dead blow flies were in the rotting carcasses. Obviously the downspout and the rot had been ignored for years.
5. Use chemical inventories and hazard audits to reduce risks, avoid poor air quality, avoid waste by coordinating purchasing, and avoid thousands in hazardous waste disposal costs. The MA Department of Public Health inspector found conditions at Newton North High School that had been identified many times over in a collection of school inspection reports compiled over twenty years.
His letter noted that “incompatible storage of chemicals, and storage of chemicals in leaking or damaged containers may lead to unexpected fires, explosions or release of toxic fumes and gases into the occupied spaces of the school. Chemicals are stored alphabetically instead of according to chemical class or hazard, i.e., flammables, corrosives and explosives sitting next to each other. Old and deteriorating containers being attacked by acid and vapors as a result of improper storage of acids and organics. There is no labeling or identification. There are chemicals of questionable use in a high school chemistry lab. Chemicals are deteriorating to the point that the secondary containers holding them have started to corrode, i.e. bromine containers in an old inoperable refrigerator also stored xylene and trichloroacetic acid (located within five feet of a major school corridor.)
You may not understand the chemistry but no one should have trouble understanding the terms “toxic fumes,” “flammables,” and “explosives.” The problem could have cost many people their lives. Newton families are lucky that all it cost the school was $60,000 for an unplanned hazardous materials emergency removal.
6. Schools cannot go wrong keeping in mind their mission, “education.”
Educate everyone to exercise their special rights as parents, employees, students and citizens so they can advocate together for protective air quality standards on building committees, school health advisory councils and environmental quality teams. An environmental defense plan that consistently puts children’s health and safety first and uses asthma-safe standards for school design, renovation, operation and maintenance, will be a win-win success story for us all.
- 0 -
1. Prevalence of Asthma in the US Population, 1988-1994. KM Bang and JH Him, Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988-1994), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, CDC, Morgantown, WV 26505.
2. Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risk (SENSOR).
3. Building Minds, Minding Buildings—Turning Crumbling Schools into Environments for Learning http://www.aft.org/topics/building-conditions/index.htm
Think of an IAQ Team as your best Environmental Defense Plan
Ellie Goldberg, M.Ed., www.healthy-kid.info
c. 1999, v. 2007
I am an advocate for the growing population of students with asthma and I know that a school that is safe for children with asthma is a safer, more productive, healthier place for everyone.
I urge anyone involved in the design, building, renovation, maintenance, management or inspection of schools to remember that schools are special because they house children. And today, anywhere from 4 to 20% or more of the students in a given school have asthma.
The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program‘s (NAEPP) questionnaire: How Asthma Friendly Is Your School? asks:
- Does the school maintain good indoor air quality?
- Does it reduce or eliminate allergens and irritants that can make asthma worse?
If the answer to any of its questions is no, NAEPP warns that students are facing obstacles to asthma control and their attendance and progress in school will suffer.
Asthma is an inflammatory condition of the airways. Inflammation is the body’s response to injury. Having asthma is like having a sunburn in your airways. Preventing and managing asthma requires protecting the airways from the allergens and irritants that cause and aggravate the inflammation.
A sixth grader explains how a school with moldy carpets made him sick in an award winning school essay and exhibit titled, “The Effect of Carpet on Students.”
"Allergies make you feel horrible. Sinus and lung congestion, headaches, runny nose, breathing problems, sore throat, coughing and fatigue make it difficult for you to concentrate. You are not happy when you have allergies and are congested. Being sick affects your behavior…Some medicines you take make you sleepy, dopey, irritable, disoriented, or hyper which affects your concentration. If your are absent from school, you get behind in your work and miss the teacher’s instruction."
While there are no statistics on children’s school-related asthma, one government occupational health survey (1) listed elementary and secondary schools as "industries with a high prevalence of asthma" (12.0%), even higher than automotive repair shops (9.2%).
The MA Department of Public Health's newsletter, Lung Disease Bulletin (2) (December, 1996) highlights teachers who developed asthma as a result of school conditions that included inadequate ventilation, water-damaged moldy carpets, decaying organic debris in the ventilation system, and inappropriate application of pesticides to carpets. The toll from mismanaged renovations in occupied buildings is even higher.
As students and staff at the Pollard School in Needham (MA) learned first hand, going to school amid demolition, construction and renovation presents a variety of serious threats to health and safety and can leave a legacy of disruption, illness and disability that continues for years.
It is obvious that bad air at school sabotages a child’s education, making it harder to learn and making it impossible to live well. Students (and teachers) who use bronchodilators to keep their airways open in unhealthy environments are setting themselves up for more serious long term lung damage.
I urge school officials who ignore or minimize complaints of health problems to remember the 1937 Texas School Disaster where students and teachers endured headaches, red teary eyes, nausea, and breathing difficulties for weeks as gas fumes filled the school. On March 18, 1937, a gas explosion killed 319 students, teachers and visitors. (Victims identified as of 2007)
Those lives were a terrible price to pay for the false economies that led to short cuts in design and inadequate ventilation at the expense of health and safety.
It is not hard to see how ignoring air quality concerns at school creates an acute threat and a cumulative disadvantage for students and wastes millions of education and health care dollars. We may never know how many points children lose taking MCAS or SAT tests in rooms with high levels of CO2 (carbon dioxide) or moldy carpets but we know that that these schools are not safe environments for teaching and learning.
The logic is simple. Children are required by law to go to school. Therefore parents assume that schools will be safe for their children. They rely on school officials to anticipate reasonably foreseeable dangers and take steps to prevent harm, for example, from asbestos, solvents or pesticides. Building "experts" that find levels of contaminants below OSHA standards and therefore consider them acceptable for schools ignore the special vulnerabilities of children.
They also ignore the fact that schools have additional responsibilities to children under laws defining special education and disability rights. Schools cannot simply reject or ignore children because they have asthma. Schools must be accessible to all children, including those more vulnerable than typical children to injury or illness because they have health conditions such as asthma, allergies or learning disabilities.
To protect the right of all children to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, schools must reduce barriers to attendance including conditions that cause preventable illness. They must work to prevent or change conditions which create a disadvantage or disparate impact on any child or group of children.
Also consider employees with asthma. In 1996, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination awarded $200,000 to a school nurse in Burlington, MA because poor ventilation and contaminants in the school exacerbated her asthma and a school official had repeatedly disregarded her physician's advice to install a window in her office. The judgment concluded that “a reasonable person would have found such conditions intolerable” and that “a reasonable person would not have remained at a job which endangered her health with no hope of improvement.” Her case was strong because she had detailed notes of her symptoms, her physician’s recommendations, and the school’s ventilation and contamination problems. Most significant, she had a copy of every notice she had given to school officials giving them an opportunity to address her concerns.
I guarantee you, if you look at your school through the viewpoint of students and teachers with asthma, you will never set your standards for health and safety to high. You will never betray the trust placed in you by your colleagues and your community and you will save money at the same time.
YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE PLAN
1. Be an IAQ team player. Think wholistically. Recognize that the whole school is an integrated interdependent living system. Even installing a copy machine without planning to exhaust contaminants exposes people to ozone and other irritating and toxic emissions.
2. Keep good records. Encourage health monitoring and hazards reporting by staff, students and parents. They are the most cost-effective sources of information about a school. Encourage staff and students to make regular reports about comfort, symptoms and hazards and poor conditions. This information can help you map symptom, time, and location patterns that are more helpful than air quality tests in pin-pointing poor conditions that cause health problems.
3. Old inspection reports are a gold mine of information. Study them. Every school system has accumulated a vareity of useful documents such as school maintenance records and service contracts, fire and safety inspections, pest control service records and reports from such organizations such as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation committee. They could save every school money wasted on useless tests and inspections, hasty repairs, and poorly managed renovations not to mention the expense of litigation and liability after a crisis.
Peabody (MA) High school teachers and students suffered serious disabling illnesses and the district paid tens of thousands of dollars for inspections when old inspection reports in the files had identified the same serious building problems and hazards years earlier.
4. Put a high priority on regular facility audits designed to save money by preventing deterioration and waste. Adopting a school-wide Integrated Pest Management program, for example, not only makes everyone in a school aware and responsible for keeping the school clean, dry and in good repair, It puts a priority on promptly correcting poor conditions and poor sanitation to prevent rodent and insect problems. It prevents damage and deterioration and avoids the risks of using pesticides.
A pest control expert in one Newton school pointed out how the district could have saved thousands of dollars if someone had simply re-attached a down spout that was laying on the ground. Conducting an inspection during a rain storm he noted a waterfall over a courtyard door that was fragmented and green with mold. The eave over the door was bent and the water was funneling down, splashing on the step at the bottom of the door. The frame gaped. The wall and the base of the door was rotted. Inside, behind a heating panel, there were dead mice on glue boards. Dead blow flies were in the rotting carcasses. Obviously the downspout and the rot had been ignored for years.
5. Use chemical inventories and hazard audits to reduce risks, avoid poor air quality, avoid waste by coordinating purchasing, and avoid thousands in hazardous waste disposal costs. The MA Department of Public Health inspector found conditions at Newton North High School that had been identified many times over in a collection of school inspection reports compiled over twenty years.
His letter noted that “incompatible storage of chemicals, and storage of chemicals in leaking or damaged containers may lead to unexpected fires, explosions or release of toxic fumes and gases into the occupied spaces of the school. Chemicals are stored alphabetically instead of according to chemical class or hazard, i.e., flammables, corrosives and explosives sitting next to each other. Old and deteriorating containers being attacked by acid and vapors as a result of improper storage of acids and organics. There is no labeling or identification. There are chemicals of questionable use in a high school chemistry lab. Chemicals are deteriorating to the point that the secondary containers holding them have started to corrode, i.e. bromine containers in an old inoperable refrigerator also stored xylene and trichloroacetic acid (located within five feet of a major school corridor.)
You may not understand the chemistry but no one should have trouble understanding the terms “toxic fumes,” “flammables,” and “explosives.” The problem could have cost many people their lives. Newton families are lucky that all it cost the school was $60,000 for an unplanned hazardous materials emergency removal.
6. Schools cannot go wrong keeping in mind their mission, “education.”
Educate everyone to exercise their special rights as parents, employees, students and citizens so they can advocate together for protective air quality standards on building committees, school health advisory councils and environmental quality teams. An environmental defense plan that consistently puts children’s health and safety first and uses asthma-safe standards for school design, renovation, operation and maintenance, will be a win-win success story for us all.
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1. Prevalence of Asthma in the US Population, 1988-1994. KM Bang and JH Him, Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988-1994), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, CDC, Morgantown, WV 26505.
2. Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risk (SENSOR).
3. Building Minds, Minding Buildings—Turning Crumbling Schools into Environments for Learning http://www.aft.org/topics/building-conditions/index.htm
12/7/08
The case against BPA
Massachusetts State PTA, P.O. Box 421, Rehoboth, MA 02769 508.347.7055 www.masspta.org
for the
Boston City Council Committee on Environment and Health
Ellie Goldberg, M.Ed., VP Legislation, MassPTA, May 29, 2008
for the
Boston City Council Committee on Environment and Health
My name is Ellie Goldberg. I am an advocate for healthy children, healthy schools and environmental health and safety. I am also a board member and Vice-president of Legislation for the Massachusetts PTA. I thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
Massachusetts PTA is part of the largest volunteer child advocacy organization in the United States. It is a not-for-profit organization of parents, educators, students, and other citizens active in their schools and communities. First organized in 1910, MassPTA now has approximately 19,000 members in 119 local units carrying on almost one hundred years of advocacy for children, families and schools.
PTA is a leader in reminding our nation of its obligations to children. The MassPTA position statement on Safe and Nurturing Environments dedicates us to support, expand, and improve efforts to protect children from toxic exposures that cause preventable illnesses and disabilities.
Just as MassPTA urges the passage of An Act to Promote Safer Alternatives to Toxic Chemicals as the safe choice and the smart choice for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we urge the City of Boston to set a high standard for children's health and safety, public health and corporate accountability.
We know BPA is toxic and that it can sabotage children's healthy development. Indeed, our children are the hit and run victims of the thousands of health damaging and life altering "stealth" substances that are ubiquitous in our water, air and food and in the consumer products we use in our daily lives.
We see the evidence of harm with our own eyes… in our families, in our schools, in our communities, and in the daily newspapers. We need to stop the crisis of chronic disease and disability that leads to the rising health care and health insurance costs that are the budget busters of every family, school, business and municipality in the state. We cannot afford to wait for the federal system or for the marketplace to address the gaps in protection from toxic chemicals.
In the 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (whose 101st birthday was this week) described the link between the contamination of the environment and our health. In Chapter 14: One in Four, Carson pointed out that the most dangerous type of exposure was the "minute exposures, repeated over and over throughout the years." Carson explained that unlike diseases and injuries caused by germs, we have put the vast majority of chemicals into the environment and, if we wish, we can eliminate many of them to lessen or mitigate their horrible impact. Her most basic legacy is the message that "prevention is the imperative."
We need to always remember that the wealth of our communities is the health of our children. The public has the right to expect that our elected and appointed government officials at every level will act to safeguard the long term economic and health security of our families.
We cannot undo the contamination and continuous malignant exposures from BPA and other toxic chemicals already in our environment and in our bodies. But we can stop it from getting worse.
We can adopt standards that stop the manufacture, distribution and sale of children’s products and all food and beverage containers that contain BPA and other known hormone disrupters, carcinogens, and neurotoxins.
We can align the use of public funds by our agencies, schools, grantees and contractors with standards and regulations that protect and safeguard children and public health by establishing "purchasing preferences" to allow only the purchase and use of products made without hormone disrupters, carcinogens, and neurotoxins.
We can eliminate unnecessary hazardous products from our homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces.
I encourage you to join PTA in working for the education, health and safety of your children and mine.
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