by Bruce Rosenbloom
(with contributions from Audrey Blumberg, Senior Associate Provost)

On April 2nd, 2003, Adelphi held the second in a series of public education symposiums, entitled, "Our Children at Risk-Protecting Children from Environmental Exposure." Like the previous event last October, the focus concerned the links between various environmental exposure and children's health and developmental concerns, but with an emphasis on how to remedy these issues. Over 300 persons attended, representing a wide spectrum of society from health care professionals, parents, school officials, hospital administrators, educators and representatives from local government.

The Speakers
In introducing the forum, Adelphi President Robert A. Scott expressed his conviction that universities, such as Adelphi, must take a leadership role in shaping our societal obligations to protect our children. Dr. Scott asserted: "The presenters demonstrate the best application of the alignment of research, education and policy. How we continue their efforts, may represent one of the most significant legacies we leave for our children"

Patricia Wood, executive director of Grassroots Environmental Education and visiting scholar at Adelphi spoke first about the 'joint statement" resulting from the first symposium. This document, signed by many legislators, health professionals and academics, is seen as a vehicle for making change on a local, state and national level. As stated in its' first paragraph, "We join together as parents, scientists, physicians, legislators, and other care givers to affirm our belief that all children have the right to a safe and supportive environments which helps ensure their health, development, and well-being…."

Ms Woods called for creating a "new paradigm for children's health" in order to address increasing incidences of childhood autism, cancer, and asthma. Arguing that environmental factors have been shown more important than genetics as the cause for illness in children, Ms. Woods claimed that "we have failed as a society" and stressed that education forums - like this symposium, was one way to address these critical issues.

Senator Hillary Clinton sent a video-taped greeting. Congratulating participants on the conference, she went on to affirm her position, "to stand with us and be a partner in this cause. We need to take the special needs of children into account, now." Senator Clinton emphasized the need to pass new legislation, enforce existing environmental laws, and protect the public from the excesses of industry.

The third speaker, Attorney General Elliot Spitzer gave a spirited presentation about the lack of accountability in public and private life. Corporations, he stated, often make decisions which may benefit their bottom line at the expense of the public good. As an example, Spitzer cited an alarming statistic that the average CEO compensation has gone from forty times an average workers wages in 1980, to over 400 times that worker as of 2001.

The Clean Air Act, Spitzer reported, is being diluted by the current administration, leading to more acid rain, dead forests and Adirondack lakes, and increased childhood asthma. "The Bush administration is the first and only administration that has tried to weaken this act." Power plants in the mid-West are a major cause of this problem, but are getting a reprieve from an Administration that seems antithetical to environmental regulations.

In a similar fashion, diesel emissions from trucks and busses are posing a real health concern that is largely unaddressed by the regulatory process. The EPA, Spitzer pointed out, averages diesel emissions over a three year period, which makes the problem seem non-existent and any remedial action unnecessary. Recent studies however, show that school children are exposed to high levels of diesel exhaust when they ride school buses or sit in schools adjacent to idling busses. A simple law, proposed by the Attorney General, to turn off the engines when school buses are not in use, provides a simple remedy to improve the situation.

In the area of pesticides, Spitzer's office also has been quite active. The Attorney General's office worked out a consent decree to have Dow Chemical desist from giving insufficient warnings on its Dursban pesticide. Without these warnings, this popular pesticide, in the same family as nerve gas, is being casually applied to lawns, educational facilities, and other areas that children are exposed to. New York State is now considering a lawsuit to force compliance "from a company that makes billions, yet refuses to spend a small amount to properly educate the public."

A forth speaker, Dr. John Wargo, a professor of environmental policy and risk analysis at Yale University, and is an expert in pesticide effects on children. Professor Wargo asked the provocative question, "Can we learn from our mistakes?" Reviewing over 100 years of environmental blunders and tragedies (e.g. atomic weapons testing and DDT overuse), he wondered whether the EPA is protecting the public from the thousands of chemicals in circulation. The Clean Water act, that the EPA enforces, currently only addressees 90 out of thousands of chemicals found in our water. Many hazardous chemicals are allowed to stay in our water, Wargo claimed, due to influence and pressure from business interests. A further weakness in the EPA approach, Wargo discussed, was the regulation of one pesticide at a time, instead of passing regulations for groups of pesticides with similar properties. Consequently, when a pesticide like DDT was banned, industry introduced dozens of similar pesticides, making review and regulation of each virtually impossible.

Professor Wargo also stressed the importance for testing pesticides in real life situations. For example, children are exposed to a lot more pesticides due to their diet (like drinking apple juice), their small size, and the uniformity of their diet. Given the rate of growth in small children, certain developing organ systems are more susceptible to pollution since they are growing rapidly. Regulations, Wargo argued, need to be written with the most vulnerable population in mind. In most instances of pollution, that population is the very young. He described his studies which put monitors on children to detect diesel fume exposure, which reveal much greater exposure than 3-year averages.

The final speaker was Dr. Herbert Needleman, a pediatrician and pioneer in research on heavy metal toxicity in children. Legislation to limit lead levels in gasoline was largely attributable to his studies which clearly demonstrated a dose-specific relationship between lead and aggressive behavior, and brain damage in youngsters. Since Roman times, humans have been aware of the dangers of lead exposure, yet it was in the 1990's that any effective legislation was passed to limit its spread.

Dr. Needleman and his colleagues were the first to study the long-term effects of lead on children. He conducted a ground-breaking study that clearly linked high lead levels to aggressive and anti- social behavior in children. Years later, he tracked down many of the same subjects, who often had dropped out of schools and were in prison. A further study of prisoners clearly showed that lead toxicity was present in a significant proportion of the prison population. Needleman proposed that unemployed people should be trained to remove lead from inner-city environments, to help eliminate this risk factor for hurting another generation of children.

The symposium ended with a question and answer period when participants asked about issues like the quality of Long Island water, how to diagnose toxicity in children, and steps the public need to take to protect communities. It was clear that this symposium, like the first, struck a cord of concern with the audience. Both speakers and attendees seemed motivated toward working for increased environmental protection and ensuring further education efforts to keep the public abreast of these concerns.