Fewer risks for smarter students

By Kamyar Enshayan

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At my university, the College of Education has 100 years-plus of experience in early childhood education. It is universally understood that early years are critical in child development, and all of us can enrich these early years.

The journal of Environmental Health Perspectives has published three studies related to early childhood exposure to common pesticides. Blood and urine samples from 1,000 pregnant women and their babies were analyzed over 10 years.

Conclusion: Babies exposed to pesticides in the womb have lower I.Q. scores than peers by the time they reach school age. Early childhood was compromised, resulting in lifelong lower functions and immense costs to society.

Referring to these studies, the New York Times quoted renowned pediatrician Philip Landrigan: “When we took lead out of gasoline, we reduced lead poisoning by 90 percent, and we raised the I.Q. of a whole generation of children by four or five points.” He advised sharply reducing children's exposure to pesticides with public policy.

Renowned biologist Sandra Steingraber's new book, “Raising Elijah: Protecting our children in an age of environmental crisis,” explores environmental lives of children and documents how child development is intertwined with our national energy, transportation and agricultural policies.

One recurring theme is the failure of the individualized approach to public health: “surround the kids with brain poisons and enlist mothers and fathers to serve as security detail.” In response, she writes: “If organophosphate pesticides are damaging children's brains at background levels of exposure and above, they should be abolished. After decades of dithering, abolition was the decision we ultimately took with lead paint. It worked. Educating parents to prevent the problem ... did not.”

In the face of looming climate disruptions (which are a huge health threat to children), Steingraber suggests that we demonstrate to our kids ways that are visible (clotheslines, garden, compost pile), as well as working toward public policies that move us to massive conservation and renewable energy.

Steingraber refers to the environmental crisis as two crises with a common root - economic dependency on fossil energy, which disrupts the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases and accumulates chemical pollutants in our bodies.

Steingraber reminds us that a better world is possible. We need to mobilize and create broad cultural and policy changes that will safeguard the biosphere on which our children's lives depend.

Kamyar Enshayan is director of University of Northern Iowa's Center for Energy and Environmental Education.

Comments: kamyar.

enshayan@uni.edu