Earth Day Sunday
April 21, 2002

Raising Children Toxic Free

by Shantilal P. Bhagat

  Shantilal Bhagat is a Church of the Brethren representative to the Eco-Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches of Christ and the author of Your Health and the Environment: A Christian Perspective.

All children need our commitment to be better stewards of the Earth so that their health, safety and success might be insured, but the plight of some children calls for special attention-- the children whose homes or schools are located near toxic waste sites, those who work long hours in factories and fields (often in hazardous conditions), those who look for nourishment in landfills, and those whose homes are washed away in floods or affected by deforestation.

We are not alone in this task. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the United Nations in 1989. Unfortunately, the US is one of the two countries that have not signed this treaty. In April 2001, the UN Commission on Human Rights declared formally that pollution and destruction of natural environment is both a crime against nature and a violation of human rights.

Better Living Through Chemicals

"Better Living Through Chemicals" was a slogan of some chemical companies in the Chemical Age of the last century. Chemicals did provide relief through antibiotics, penicillin, and other medical advances and have led to a range of creature comforts our ancestors could have never imagined. Over the last sixty years 80,000 new chemical compounds have been invented and dispersed into our environment. These compounds end up everywhere-- in farmland soil; in storage containers of varying reliability; in air, water, food; in consumer products; in the tissues of plants, animals, and people.

Everyone on the planet is carrying at least two hundred and fifty measurable chemicals in his or her body that were not part of human chemistry before the 1920s according to biologist Pete Myers who coauthored Our Stolen Future, a book about endocrine-disrupting chemicals published in 1996.

Many experts believe that the rules and standards for protecting public health and the environment from undue chemical risk are inadequate. The public cannot tell whether a large majority of the highest-use chemicals in the United States pose health hazards or not. New chemicals and new uses for chemicals enter the global commerce so rapidly and the economic interest in their use becomes so large so quickly, that we are by default conducting a massive toxicological trial. Our children and our children's children are the experimental animals.

Greater Vulnerability of Children

The interaction between environmental chemicals and child development is a new area of public health science. Only in the past few years have we begun to grasp the potential health effects of even slight disturbances in child development. It is now clear from studies of animals and children that subtle changes in the concentrations of normally occurring chemicals such as hormones--as well as the presence of toxic agents like lead, mercury or PCBs--can produce profound and permanent changes in the developing nervous system. These changes can lead to decrements in mental performance and alterations of reproductive system.

Why are children more vulnerable to toxics than adults?

Health Problems Dioxin--A Major Culprit?

Dioxin is a major public health issue for the general population as well as for children. Dioxin is the most toxic, deadly by-product of many chemical, manufacturing, and combustion processes. Any use of chlorine in industrial processes, including incineration, chemical and plastic manufacturing, paper and pulp bleaching, or burning hazardous waste in cement kilns, results in dioxin formation. Dioxin enters the human body through diet, with food from animals being the predominant pathway. The American people are at serious risk from their daily intake of dioxin in food.

What is our Government doing to protect children?* What You Can Do* Children's Environmental Health Toxics Pesticides Healthy Schools Reproductive And Developmental Toxics Government Agencies

Additional Resources

For more information about the effects of toxic chemicals on human health, see the following resources:

  1. Your Health and the Environment: A Christian Perspective, a Study/Action Guide for Congregations by Shantilal P. Bhagat, available for $7.50 from the National Council of Churches. (800-762-0968)
  2. Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? by Theo Colborn et. al. (Penguin Books USA, New York, 1996)
  3. Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment by Sandra Steingraber (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, New York, 1997)

* Adapted with permission from resources produced by the National Religious Partnership for the Environment's campaign on children's health and the environment. Ph. 212-316-7441. http://www.nrpe.org).

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