Lawmakers Finally Agree to Ban Poison in Kids’ Items Despite Exxon Lobbying

Gee, Congress. Pat on the back. After literally decades of kids playing with toys filled with toxic chemicals, you’ve finally gotten around to banning pthalates in kids’ items. Great job. We’re so glad that you’ve been on top of children’s’ safety issues, protecting our kids from harm.

The U.S. does not currently require industries to prove the safety of a chemical before it’s allowed on the market. Parents may purchase these toys for their kids thinking, ‘Surely it’s safe – the government wouldn’t allow them to be sold if they weren’t, right?’ Unfortunately, that’s incorrect. Congress just now passed a measure that would ban pthalates, a dangerous family of toxins, from kids’ items. The ban would take effect in 6 months – that is, if President Bush doesn’t veto it, which he has threatened to do.

From The Washington Post:

Among other things, the legislation would ban lead in children’s products and would give consumers access to a new database of complaints or accident reports for goods. The measure also allows stiffer fines for violations and enhanced enforcement of consumer safety laws.

Under language finalized yesterday, House and Senate lawmakers agreed to permanently ban three types of phthalates from children’s toys and to outlaw three other phthalates from products pending an extensive study of their health effects in children and pregnant women.

Phthalates make plastics softer and more durable and also are added to perfumes, lotions, shampoos and other items. They are so ubiquitous that in one 1999 study, the Food and Drug Administration found traces in all of its 1,000 subjects.

We haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet. Believe it or not, this legislation got bogged down in the House due to a ‘costly battle’ waged by Exxon Mobil (could they BE any more evil?), who manufacture the pthalate most commonly found in children’s toys. In fact, they have said that they’re protesting the ban because without pthalates, manufacturers will be ‘forced’ to use even more dangerous chemicals instead.

Here’s an idea, folks: STOP PUTTING TOXINS IN KIDS’ TOYS! It’s really not that hard! It’s amazing that these companies are allowed to knowingly poison kids – and our country has just sat back and allowed it to happen. Sickening.

Link [The Washington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user greenmelinda

Fallujah Doctors Claim Increased Deformities in Babies After ‘Special Weaponry’ Used by US

Another shameful legacy the United States may be leaving behind in Iraq – deformed children. Doctors and residents in Fallujah are saying that babies born there are showing increasing rates of deformities after the US began using ‘special weaponry’ in the two massive bombing campaigns in the city during 2004.

Though they denied it at first, the Pentagon admitted in 2005 to using ‘white phosphorous’, a restricted incendiary weapon. Depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were also used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon has admitted to using 1,200 tons of it in Iraq thus far.

From AfterDowningStreet.org:

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.

“We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles,” Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. “I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.

“The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations.”

“I had two children who had brain damage from birth,” 28-year-old Hayfa’ Shukur told IPS. “My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money.”

Shukur said doctors told her that it was use of the restricted weapons that caused her children’s brain damage and subsequent deaths, “but none of them had the courage to give me a written report.”

Doctors and the Fallujah General Hospital administration will not go on record about the deformities, fearing reprisal, so no official data is available – we can only go on anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately, it may be many years before we find out the whole truth of how children in Iraq are being affected by this unnecessary war.

Shameful. We sent our troops to Iraq, to risk their own lives, for the wrong reasons – and as a result, who paid for it the most? Innocent citizens of Iraq. Families torn apart, lives destroyed – and for what?

Link [AfterDowningStreet.org]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Kids Nearly Starved to Death by Improper Vegan Diet

Three young children in Scottsdale, Arizona nearly died because their misguided parents were feeding them what they supposedly thought was a healthy vegan diet. When Blair Parker called 911 because his youngest daughter seemed to be having a seizure, doctors discovered that all three emaciated children were much smaller than they should be. The 3-year-old weighed only 13 pounds, the 11-year-old was the size of a 5-year-old and the 9-year-old was the size of a 3-year-old.

Both parents were arrested and criminally charged. The mother may see as much as 30 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of 3 counts of intentional child abuse. The parents say that their diet stems from Blair’s college studies in nutrition.

From Azcentral.com:

He described a daily regimen with the children that included prayer, study, chores, exercise and rigid adherence to diet, right down to what liquids they could drink and when.

“My children might have been short and light in weight, but I never considered they were unhealthy,” he told the jury.

Parker claimed that he could not find a doctor of his own religious faith or dietary beliefs that he trusted. Instead, he consulted with a naturopath who lived in Washington state and who could not actually see or examine the children.

Parker still claims that the children suffered from “malabsorption,” an inability to absorb vital nutrients.

The prosecutor said that Parker obsessed about the children’s bowel movements and gave them enemas that further impeded absorbing any nutrients of the food they ate.

“Vegan children who are fed properly grow,” said Deputy County Attorney Frankie Grimsman.

And in fact, when the children were placed in foster homes, they immediately began to gain weight - while still maintaining vegan diets.

This is why it’s so important to be educated about nutrition, period, but especially when you want to be vegan. You can’t just eat salad all day every day and hope for the best, and when children are involved, it’s all the more important. A lot of people don’t have a great understanding of what it means to be vegan, and how to get all of the nutrients you need.

Clearly, these children nearly lost their lives and the parents intentionally kept their condition from the public by homeschooling them and rarely taking them outside the home. 30 years does seem like a bit much, though – this isn’t too different from ignorant people feeding babies sugar water in bottles instead of breast milk or formula, which, crazy as it sounds, does happen. Clearly, we need better nutrition education in this country!

I hope somebody is feeding those kids big, juicy sandwiches right now.

Link [Azcentral.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user moria

We Enjoy Modern Carbon-Emitting Life, and Poor Kids Around the World Pay the Price

The rich developed world has yet to reign in the habits that are contributing to global warming, and guess who’s paying the price: the world’s poorest children. As wealthy businesspeople, tycoons, celebrities and other privileged people enjoy large gas-guzzling vehicles, trips on private jets and other non-sustainable penchants, children across the globe are seeing their futures grow more dismal as each day passes.

From Reuters:

The UNICEF report “Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility” measured action on targets set in the Millennium Development Goals to halve child poverty by 2015. It found failure on counts from health to survival, education and sex equality.

“It is clear that a failure to address climate change is a failure to protect children,” said UNICEF UK director David Bull. “Those who have contributed least to climate change — the world’s poorest children — are suffering the most.”

The report said climate change could add 40,000-160,000 extra child deaths a year in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa through lower economic growth.

Of course, the richest of the rich aren’t the only ones to blame – we as a society are. The western civilized world continues to flourish at the expense of those less fortunate. The United States and China are at the top of the list, producing far more carbon emissions than other countries and showing no real signs of stopping. While the U.S. is starting to take measures that may help decrease carbon output in the future, China has yet to address the problem, and recent reports show that it’s only going to get worse.

Some of the great times that lie ahead for the poor include climate-change worsened malaria, less food and water to go around and an increase in natural disasters. Naturally, these things will affect the entire world, but as always, the poor will bear the brunt of it, being unable to properly prepare and react.

Since most Americans avoid world news and turn the channel when those Sally Struthers ‘feed the children’ commercials come on, it’s doubtful that this prediction will do any good toward reigning in the excessive lifestyle that has helped create this mess.

Link [Reuters]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Nature Deficit Disorder in the UK: 25 Percent of British 10-Year-Olds Never Play Outside by Themselves

I used to work in various national parks. One thing we hated was the tourist kids, the Prisoners of the Backseat. Whining, mewling, shrieking, occasionally vomiting–we thought they were remarkably bad-smelling little hominids. Sticky, too, should one happen to touch you. Yuck. We considered them beneath our notice, and were most pleased when they never left the backseat.

It was only quite some time later that I came to see the error in my thinking. But now, I’m not alone in that. People are beginning to notice that kids nowadays don’t get out much; in fact, I took the title of this entry from an entire book on the phenomenon (Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv). We covered the issue in EarthFirst here. It pops up all over now, as in this story from Great Britain that we found in the Daily Mail:

[A] quarter of all children between eight and 10 have never played outside without adult supervision.

Ministers are concerned that children now have fewer opportunities than ever to play outdoors thanks to over-zealous health and safety crackdowns and a “no ball games here” culture….

Research has found that the average age at which children are allowed outside without adult supervision has risen from around seven years in the 1960s and 70s to just over eight years now.

One in three parents will not even allow older children, aged eight to 17, to play outside the house or garden.

It’s not clear what effect this is all going to have on a child’s brain. One can only speculate. But I understand now that those vile kids in the backseat, the ones we used to curse, were the future of the national parks. In the coming years, if they don’t care about the parks, no one else will. I hope someone occasionally opened up the car door and let them out.

Link: [The Daily Mail]

Billy Knows a Tree When He Googles One: The Soccer Mom Syndrome

The big ass Chevy Suburban that just cut you off is not dangerous because of the cell phone-jabbing, 5′2″ super housewife behind the wheel. The real danger lives behind those tinted rear windows, in the murky back seat region, where billions of microchips and processors compete for the attention of the one little whiny occupant who reigns supreme. Fumbling from Gameboy to iPod to DVD remote control, it’s a wonder little Billy even finds the time to allow a finger to break free and troll after those boogers that are just dying to get out. Our little friend has driven through the forest a billion times, but has yet to so much as touch a tree.

In his discussion at the Aspen Environment Forum, EO Wilson (Pellegrino Research Professor in Entomology at Harvard) blamed the group that he lovingly referred to as “soccer moms” for the declining interest in nature and the environment amongst children.

DiscoverMagazine.com reports:

Wilson filled more than an hour of questions and answers with witty remarks and barbs. And to be sure, his tone was playful. Yet, there was a seriousness behind his “soccer mom” remarks that struck a cord with many people in the audience: Have children been largely cut off from nature because of technology?

Many people agreed that they have, with video games, the Internet and structured play times replacing — as comedian George Carlin commented in a recent skit — sitting outside in a yard with a stick wondering how to entertain themselves.

If Wilson is right, little urban zombies like Billy will one day rule the world, able to leap tall logarithmic search engines in a single bound, but stupidly worthless when it comes to differentiating between an acorn and a pine cone. These are tomorrow’s Republican Senators and Governors.

Links [Discover Magazine] & [The Aspen Environment Forum]

Photo credit: Flickr user MonkeyLeo13

Guess What I’ve Done? I Invented a Light That Plugs Into the Sun

I found this one via my buddy Hank Green.

From Muggle Sam:

Wouldn’t it be cool if we all changed our light bulbs to energy saving ones?

A compact fluorescent light bulb uses 1/4 of the electricity and lasts 10 times longer than standard light bulbs. Something everyone can do to help reduce the amount of C02 emissions.

Poem by my favorite Poet, Shel Silverstein

Performed by Sophia Age 4

Made in iMovie

We are so excited to be part of the 11th Hour Action Film’s YouTube channel! Big fans of what you are all doing at LeonardoDicaprio.org !!

New See-Saw Technology Harnesses The Power of Children

I’m into old-school devices re-engineered to create energy or somehow become more efficient. Take the newly released solar-powered vibrator. Now there’s something that finally has come into the 21 Century!

Today’s latest find is a See-Saw designed to harness the power of children (obese, sugar-fueled kids are probably best), which could then be used to power a school for an evening. The idea came from a 23-year-old consumer product design student who became inspired after helping build a school in Kenya. From the article,

He said: “The current need for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa is staggering. Without power development is extremely difficult. “The potential for this product is huge and the design could be of benefit to numerous communities in Africa and beyond.” He has calculated that five to 10 minutes use on the see-saw could generate enough electricity to light a classroom for an evening, for example. Many schools in Africa open their doors in the evening to much older pupils but are only able to light their classrooms with candles or kerosene lamps.

Later this year, a prototype sourced with locally made parts will be setup in a village in Uganda.

We’re jazzed over the See-saw idea — but would be equally enamored with an energy-generating spinnie-ride as well. Sure, they always made me sick, but at least I could feel better knowing my nausea was helping save the world.

via BBC