Taking Action:
Support the School Environmental Protection Act

Earth Day Sunday
April 21, 2002

A bill is pending in Congress which can help to reduce the exposure of children to potentially toxic environmental hazards. The School Environmental Protection Act (SEPA), S. 1716, would result in several important first steps in making our schools safer places for children.

Children face an array of exposures to potentially toxic environmental hazards. We are polluting our children’s primary environments, including our work and school classrooms and playgrounds, with known hazardous substances. These include lead, PCBs, solvents, asbestos, radon, and pesticides. Exposure to these substances may be doing damage that will only show up 10, 20 or 30 years from now. Some actually refer to this as a great, uncontrolled experiment on our children—the full consequences of which we will only know in 2 or 3 generations.

Very little is known about the health effects on children of continued exposure to most of these chemicals and virtually nothing is known of the effects of being exposed to combinations of these chemicals. A recent study in the United Kingdom found that combining three common pesticides made them over 100 times more toxic in some circumstances.

In general, SEPA

  1. Decreases the exposure of public school children.
  2. Provides important advance information to parents, guardians and employees regarding pesticide use.
  3. Fills key knowledge gaps about pesticides.
  4. Focuses Federal resources and expertise on these issues.
  5. Recognizes the need to test and regulate so-called "inert" substances.
  6. Encourages improved information and communication between public school districts and parents and guardians on these issues.
  7. May decrease children's pesticide exposures in non-school situations.
  8. Acknowledges the importance of pesticide drift and encourages action to address it.
  9. Allows schools flexibility in carefully defined emergency situations.
  10. Provides reasonable enforcement provisions and funding.
SEPA is not the complete solution to the problem of exposure of children to chemicals and other substances that may be harmful in the environment. It has many weaknesses. It is, however a critically needed important step toward putting these issues on our national agenda and in reducing the exposure of our children.

Using Your Power

You can directly affect whether this important bill passes the Congress during 2002. Call, email, fax, or write to your elected members of Congress ­ Senators and Representatives ­ and tell them that you are vitally concerned about the health of our children and the effects of their exposure to toxicants in schools and that SEPA is an important first step that they should (a) Support by signing on to existing “Dear Colleague” letters in favor of this bill; (b) Vote for and encourage members of any joint conference committee to support retaining EPA in any legislation within which it has been included.

You can find out the current status of the S. 1716 by visiting the “Beyond Pesticides” web site (http://www.beyondpesticides.org/schools/index.htm). You can also check the web site of the “Children’s Environmental Health Network” (http://www.cehn.org/).

The actions suggested above are important and timely and should be carried out whatever the current status of the bill. In the event that a bill has been sent to the President’s desk, you can direct your activity towards his office.

Copyrighted by the United Methodist Church-General Board of Church & Society. Permission granted for use by denominations of the National Council of Churches of Christ and their congregations.

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