7 replies to this topic

[Shortpoet-GTD]

"For Christmas this year, Congress gave the nation's urban children a gift that will keep on giving
-- a 94 percent cut in funds for lead-poisoning prevention.
Once a child is poisoned by toxic lead, permanent brain damage reduces I.Q., lowers grades in school, and diminishes self-control.
This, in turn, can lead to frustration, a sense of failure, impulsiveness, aggression, and, for some, potentially even violence, crime, and prison.
With a peculiar mix of frugality and cruelty, Congress's $1 trillion spending bill for 2012 shrank
a small ($30 million per year) federal lead-poisoning-prevention program to a minuscule $2 million annual effort, a 94 percent cut.
And it's no surprise to anyone that the children harmed by this grinch move are mostly city kids,
which means they're mostly African-American and Hispanic.
The nation's medical establishment has been reporting excessive lead in urban children
(75 percent of them of color) since 1952 --
so we have 59 years of studies, all showing the same thing.
Therefore, in this rare instance, Congress relied on the best available science and knew exactly what it was doing.
It was saddling hundreds of thousands of urban children with persistent cognitive damage and elevated blood pressure for life.
Many studies confirm that any amount of lead reduces a child's I.Q. to some degree. (For more confirmation on this see the following studies: Binns, 2007; Bellinger, 2008b; Canfield, 2003; CDC 2004; Chiodo, 2004; Needleman, 2004; Rogan, 2003; Schwartz, 1994.)"


http://www.alternet....net_environment

[joeldgreat]

I just don't know why they do it. Lead is one of the most toxic element on Earth. It does a lot of damage in one's health. The problem is, its not an instant killer, but will kill you slowly over time. Lead poisoning affects the health of some group of people more than others. Developing countries have intolerably high levels of lead in the atmosphere because the oil companies persists in selling heavily-leaded petrol-at much higher levels than they do in the most of the industrialized countries. People who are working in or live on streets where traffic is dense are more prone to lead poisoning.

[mariaandrea]

And people say there's no class war going on....
I'll admit I don't believe there's some huge right wing conspiracy dedicated to creating a huge underclass just for the sake of it, but a lot of the policies they want and that we pursue are headed in that direction anyway. And from a green point of view, the planet and the people on it are inextricably entwined. The health of one affects the health of the other. How can we possibly ever clean the environment up unless everyone is smart enough to be on board?

[Shortpoet-GTD]

joeldgreat, on 08 February 2012 - 08:21 PM, said:

I just don't know why they do it.

I know exactly why they do it.
Lead paint is in poor neighborhoods where blacks and Latinos live.

[still learning]

Something I've sort of wondered about after reading about the current day concerns about lead poisoning in children:
For those of us who were childeren when leaded paint was the norm and when leaded gasoline was the only kind there was, were we permanently damaged?  Several generations of us?

[Shortpoet-GTD]

still learning, on 09 February 2012 - 10:31 AM, said:

Something I've sort of wondered about after reading about the current day concerns about lead poisoning in children:
For those of us who were childeren when leaded paint was the norm and when leaded gasoline was the only kind there was, were we permanently damaged?  Several generations of us?

Maybe many of us were blessed to live in homes that didn't have old peeling lead paint. When it becomes
dust from the flakes is the problem.
We always had regular non lead paint for easy clean-up.

[mariaandrea]

still learning, on 09 February 2012 - 10:31 AM, said:

Something I've sort of wondered about after reading about the current day concerns about lead poisoning in children:
For those of us who were childeren when leaded paint was the norm and when leaded gasoline was the only kind there was, were we permanently damaged?  Several generations of us?

I think it was a crapshoot. Nothing affected my IQ so I'm pretty sure I didn't have much exposure to lead, but on the other hand, I probably used pencils that had lead in the coating, which used to be common. And my first job was in a gas station, pumping gas all day long back when there was still some leaded gasoline. The thing is, some people smoke all their lives and never get lung cancer while a lot of other people do. I think this may be similar.

[jasserEnv]

I am wondering personally what the required budget now should be to prevent injury from lead. While gutting the program from 30 down to 2 million is definitely an excessive cut, I personally don't know what is the right number for funding such an initiative. Over the last few decades, much of the lead contaminiation has been cleaned up, but at what level of risk are we currently at for the current generation of children? When budget cuts are made like this, the politicians really should be looking at how much is needed.