The World Health Organization has recognized the dangers of lead regarding children and has materials related to lead and how we need to address its presence in our environment.

Besides ETOH which can slip through our brain defense system, aka the brain/blood barrier, water can readily deposit lead into brain tissue. Previously, we discovered that leaded car fuels also provide a gap in this essential brain protection. Which was more important, protecting children’s brains or stopping engine knocks in cars?

Understanding the damage lead pipes can do to children is central to being a good parent, having a responsive local government, and the EPA backing up efforts to replace old lead lines. The Biden administration is now addressing this pressing issue.

One way to measure the lead in children’s blood is a blood lead level (BLL), which is essential for developing guidelines regarding the developmental disability of children. Large cohorts of children in the 2.6 years range found that too many had higher lead levels and a developmental disability, possibly as a result.

Although lead levels were declining, significant population swaths are still affected by lead contamination. These groups are in the lower socioeconomic status, segregated communities, and those where governments have not replaced lead pipes. How did these children develop such high levels of lead in their blood and what might be done about it are two questions essential to a healthy child’s life.

Finding the Lead

Lead is ubiquitous and can be found in multiple locations. Therefore, it is insidious in its ability to cause exposure since we may not know its source. The neurotoxic substance can be found in soil and paint in homes and in the water coming from every spigot in a residence once we know that leaded pipes serve it.

What do many children do in the home? They chip away at painted surfaces with their young teeth and then ingest the poison.

How many people know that canned foods used to employ lead solder in can production? And how many of us ate foods that may have been contaminated by this lead leaching out from the cans? Any tomato product is likely to put lead into the food because of its acid content.

It may have been canned food that killed members of an 1845 expedition to the Arctic. “Dramatic evidence that lead poisoning was a key element in the failure of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 Arctic expedition has come from the result of postmortems conducted on the preserved bodies of three of Franklin’s crewmen taken from their frozen graves on Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic.”

One problem with lead exposure for children is that they may be asymptomatic at screenings because lead poisoning takes time to build up in brain tissue. However, it is associated with serious behavioral and intellectual deficits in children and adults. “By the time the detrimental effects of lead poisoning manifest, it may be too late as the effects are cumulative and irreversible.”

Still, a menace to children’s intellectual development, blood levels for lead are established and are “acceptable” according to agencies setting these parameters. The CDC has set blood levels in children that some find unacceptably high. “There’s no safe blood lead level for children. Lead can damage children’s kidneys, blood, and brains — and at high levels, it can cause coma, seizures, and death.”

How Can Lead Levels Be Lowered?

While the CDC believes they have set lead blood levels that are safe for children, what can healthcare professionals do in areas where BLLs are high?

Two types of removing lead from the blood have been devised. “Chelation therapy. In this treatment, a medication given by mouth binds with the lead so that it’s excreted in urine. Chelation therapy might be recommended for children with a blood level of 45 mcg/dL or greater and adults with high blood levels of lead or symptoms of lead poisoning.”

The second is EDTA for children or adults who cannot tolerate the first chelation method.

The primary emphasis regarding lead poisoning must be eliminating it from all environmental substrates. Even through the present and future efforts to reduce this exposure, there will be many adults and children who will suffer lifelong disabilities due to prior lead exposure.

The post The Drink That Destroys Children’s Minds Forever appeared first on Medika Life.

The U.S. Senate’s bipartisan approval of a $1 trillion infrastructure plan should give cause for collective hope. It’s extremely encouraging that our leaders in government, regardless of political party affiliation, can agree on something this important. The Build Back Better Agenda’s component of repairing our nation’s bridges, roads and public transit systems is desperately needed and long overdue.

Looking beneath the surface of the Senate Infrastructure Bill uncovers much more “there” there. Beyond roadways, airways and railways, there is recognition in this legislation — which is more important to our future than many Americans realize — that economic health, environmental health and public health are not only aligned, they are inextricably intertwined.

Think back on the environmental disasters of the last few decades: Los Angeles and toxic smog; soil contamination in Toms River, New Jersey; Flint, Michigan’s poisoned water supply. These were not isolated incidents, but part of a growing pattern of environmental degradation that impacts our very health and lives. This disturbing pattern continues in nearly constant present-day environmental catastrophes: wildfires raging throughout the American West and now in Greece and Turkey; extreme storms across the U.S. and the world, resulting in rising floodwaters wiping out whole towns in southern Europe; African famines caused by ever-increasing water scarcity. This litany of environmental disasters almost too numerous to count signals, even to skeptics, that something must be done.

Who must act? These are not Republican or Democratic Party problems, and they are not caused solely by one company or one industry. Fixing the root causes of these issues will require the best efforts of all of us: lawmakers, businesses and citizens. Preventing disease, despair and death is now a national — nay, a global — imperative, and environmental health, economic health and public health are everyone’s priorities.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a good first step toward finally working together on these defining health issues. It provides much more than infrastructure; its importance to mitigating climate change and improving environmental health — and thereby, human health — is critical. Allen Hershkowitz, Ph.D., board chairman and founding director of Sport and Sustainability International and former senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, shares:

“The U.S. Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill provides critically important funding for some of the investments urgently needed to address climate change, water pollution, and the shift away from fossil-fuel-based transportation. In doing so, the infrastructure bill will advance important ecological and public health goals, and it will undoubtedly support a healthy economy for years to come.”

Here are the public health highlights that are the unseen part of this bipartisan bill:

Clean Drinking Water

Right now, up to 10 million American households and 400,000 schools and childcare centers lack safe drinking water. The proposed bill’s $55 billion allocation represents the largest investment in clean drinking water in American history. It includes dedicated funding to replace lead pipes found across America, from rural towns to struggling cities to prosperous suburban neighborhoods. The deal’s significant investment in water infrastructure across America includes the Tribal Nations and disadvantaged communities that have been neglected longest and which need it most.

“Lead exposure in a child’s early years comes with guaranteed harm to their development — replacing America’s lead pipes is a sorely overdue national priority, and means thousands of healthier children and families,” added EPA’s recent chemical office chief Alexandra Dunn.

Environmental Remediation

 Where you live impacts how long and how well you live. Thousands of U.S. communities contain ticking toxic time bombs. The harsh reality is that 26% of Black Americans and 29% of Hispanic Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site, exposing these communities of color to dangerous levels of lead and other heavy metals and chemicals. At special risk are children, whose endocrine and other bodily systems are still developing. 

The Senate-approved deal invests $21 billion in environmental remediation to tackle legacy pollution that diminishes the health of whole towns and neighborhoods. In addition to protecting the health of these communities, the legislation provides funds and creates jobs to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites. If we turn our backs on these tasks, we turn our backs on the people living near these sites across the nation.

Public Transit

America’s transit system is hobbled with a multibillion-dollar repair backlog of more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 rail cars, 200 stations, and thousands of miles of track, signals, and power systems in need of replacement. The Senate’s $39 billion allocation to modernize transit, the largest-ever Federal investment in public transit, dedicates a larger share of funds to repair and upgrade aging infrastructure, modernize bus and rail fleets, make stations accessible to all users and bring transit service to forgotten communities. It will replace thousands of aging transit vehicles with clean, zero emission vehicles. Communities of color, twice as likely as average to rely on public transportation, will see long-neglected needs addressed.

Electric School Buses

Our nation’s children have long breathed black smoke emissions belching from the yellow school bus fleets that take them to and from school. Diesel air pollution is linked to asthma, cancer, heart disease and other health problems that cause students to miss school, particularly in communities of color and Tribal communities. This legislation will deliver thousands of electric school buses nationwide, helping more than 25 million children and thousands of bus drivers. It will also promote production of clean, non-polluting American-made buses.

Pollution Mitigation for Communities of Color

Black people are almost three times more likely to die from asthma-related causes than their white counterparts. More than one in three Latinx/Hispanics in the U.S. — or more than 23 million — live in counties where the air quality does not meet Environmental Protection Agency public health standards for smog. 

The Senate’s roughly $65 billion investment is the single largest in clean energy transmission in the nation’s history. It upgrades the country’s power infrastructure, calling for thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines that open pathways for renewable energy; creates a new “Grid Deployment Authority” that will lead to research and development for advanced transmission and electricity distribution technologies; and promotes smart grid planning and next-generation technologies such as carbon capture and clean hydrogen, resulting in air that we can all breathe safely.

The Infrastructure bill is a huge step forward, but it needs to be fully funded and supported.

“There is an inseparable relationship between human health, economic health and planetary health and given the scale and urgency of worsening global climate disruption, and the threat it poses to human survival, much more needs to be done,” states Dr. Hershkowitz. “To more effectively prepare our economy for the life-and-death ecological challenges that communities will face in the 21st century, and to do so equitably, it is essential for the Senate to now pass a budget reconciliation bill that builds on the important investments contained in the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. Doing so is essential if we are to truly transform our economy into one that aligns with ecological requirements.”

This needs to happen quickly for the sake of every aspect of our health. Supporting our environment is a good investment with a significant return. And, although paying the price tag may seem a big pill to swallow, funding the bipartisan package won’t be achieved through higher taxes, but rather by repurposing already allocated funds, including unused COVID-19 aid. Government will not have to work alone. Industry is ready and eager to roll-up-its sleeves to help. Adds Rachel Hodgdon, International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), President and CEO:

“IWBI has always believed that human health and planetary health are inextricably linked. In our work to promote, assess and certify spaces that advance human health and well-being, we recognize how critical it is to highlight the link between buildings, human health and climate change. As the country considers significant investments in public infrastructure, our buildings are poised to lead by example in the effort to create people-first places. Now is our chance to take full advantage of the Federal government’s infrastructure proposal to deliver real benefits for people in the form of cleaner air and water and smart building technologies that measure and validate human performance metrics.”

Looking at the world around us, we can see the result of neglecting our infrastructure — America is crumbing. But we can also see the result of neglecting our environmental health, as our communities are ravaged by nature’s wrath in the form of storms, fires and pandemics. It’s time America moved forward united, addressing our environmental health by providing clean drinking water, cleaning-up environmental contamination, and decreasing pollution and greenhouse emissions, all of which have had disastrous impacts on our economic and public health. The Senate bill offers a ray of hope. A good start at addressing long neglected issues. It is not a cure, but it is a step in the right direction.

Special thanks to Shira Friedman and John Bianchi of FINN Partners for their careful review of this article. Appreciation to Medika Life editors: Drs. Robert Turner and Jeffrey Livingston.

The post Our Health and Our Planet’s Health Are Intertwined appeared first on Medika Life.

We’re confronted with a looming problem. The environment is in poor health. Everything the environment sustains — plants, animals, our communities, our businesses, our families, and ourselves — are now equally at risk of poor health. As we experience record heat waves, fires burning in the western U.S. for the last decade, polluted water, and a global pandemic driven in large part by environmental factors, that couldn’t be clearer.

And yet, galvanizing support for environmental and human health remains difficult. Environmental protection, politicized for the short-term gain of a few, remains a hot button in the halls of power, but it’s becoming an issue discussed at the breakfast table for most Americans as people, communities, and corporations are starting to reach consensus, supporting the environment for the sake of health and wellbeing.

There are still immense challenges, and they hinge on communications. People, communities, and businesses possess enough power to affect the change needed to address climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation, but to bring that power to bear to heal the planet, they need to work together. That means they need to be better at communicating.

Communicating With Clarity and Impact

As communicators, it’s important that we tell it like it is. That means not only being truthful, it means using plain language that everyone can understand, but also using words that have power and work to make the point.

Humanity is in a battle and the stakes are enormous. Words are the weapons that will help us win it, and we must choose them carefully. We need words with power, value and emotional impact that convey deeper meanings. Consider the words “farmer” and “factory.”

“Farmer” conjures a very American way of life. Farmers built America, and the word is imbued with value: hard work, toughness, family, simplicity, and productivity. “Farmer” is a good word that works hard. “Factory” is also a good word, but what it emotionally summons up is another story: smokestacks, pollution, crowding, inhumanity, and alienation.

When “factory” is put together with “farm,” the specter of animals jammed together in tiny pens, unable to turn around or breathe fresh air, is clearly communicated.

While nearly nine out of ten Americans (88%) have a positive opinion of farmers, and nearly as many (84%) support sustainable farming and economies, that unwavering trust doesn’t extend to all agricultural methods. Nine in ten (89%) are opposed to factory farming practices, citing public health, worker safety and animal welfare as their main concerns.

Farmers themselves hold an even more negative opinion of factory farming; 85% of them and their families support a complete ban on new factory farming facilities, nearly twice the number of the general public.

Proponents of factory farming, attempt to defuse this emotionally charged language by substituting bland phrases such as “intensive production.” These euphemisms make use of words that lack impact. Using devalued phrases is a tactic that’s been employed as long as there have been those who defend what they know is indefensible.

While these tactical choices should be clear, strategically, we face a bigger challenge. To protect the health of the planet and humanity, we need to find new voices and new ways of reaching potential allies — and this includes everyone from small, local community groups to corporations with whom we share common ground.

…And Not a Drop to Drink

Water consumption and scarcity are rising supply-chain and health-risk issues. In a June note to investors, Barclays analysts shared that water scarcity is a concern for sectors that include a wide range of industries from agriculture to food to beverages to shipping. According to the Barclays report:

“Water is one of the most important natural resources in the world, essential for humans to survive and industries to function. And yet, we face social, environmental and development stresses stemming from water shortages and increased water usage.”

So long as it flows freely from our faucets, water doesn’t capture much attention. In the developed world, we have a naïve belief that water is infinite, but climate change is tipping the dominos that lead to water scarcity. The list of Standard and Poor 500 companies at risk for shortages includes global foods powerhouse Unilever, consumer products leader Colgate Palmolive and cleaning products giant Reckitt Benckiser, and Barclay’s predicts these and many others may face a 40% to 50% EBITDA impact.

Before supplies dry up, these three consumer-products giants are investing mightily in communication to elevate voices on the common need to work for a healthier planet by tackling climate change. Reckitt Benckiser in particular has begun listening sessions with stakeholders in areas at risk to discuss climate change and what’s needed to ensure water supplies.

They’re not just talking about environmental risk; they recognize that health is fundamental to their business success and our survival.

Together, Environmental and Health Advocacy Communicators Can Have Greater Impact.

At a time when business is recognizing and acting on the need for sustainability, a window has opened that allows environmental, health and corporate PR pros to drive a broad, united effort to effect change.

That’s got to happen quickly. To ensure their futures, industries, and communities must build out their environmental communication planning and programs, taking a far broader view that should feature a synthesis of environmental health, economic sustainability, and human health and wellness.

With a remarkable career that spans public service — as a senior attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation — environmental advocacy, and advisor to corporate boards, Bob Martineau, JD, a senior partner with Finn Partners, has seen that environmental degradation is the largest threat to our health. He said:

“Climate and environmental degradation pose a greater danger (than COVID-19), but…we live in a snapchat world of 30 second messaging. It’s hard to have that same sense of urgency when the degradation and impacts are more incremental and long term. But communicating the seriousness of the issue from a public health perspective could be the great uniter… We need to find different ways to communicate with people the importance of critical public health issues and depoliticize them. We need to find better messengers — be they ministers in the pulpit, trusted sports heroes or a favorite music legend.”

Whatever our background, we are natural allies. We face a common danger: a planet that soon won’t support our health, whether it’s human or economic. We must now see that our fates have always been inextricably intertwined, and that forces us to work together.

Environmental, health, and corporate communicators must learn from each other, share best practices and adapt to meet our imperative, shared need to communicate effectively with the public with clarity and impact for the sake of our health.

The post The Power of Words appeared first on Medika Life.

With so many voices and so much energy being pushed forth to reopen the schools and get the kids back into the classroom, we have to begin to ask several fundamental questions. And these do not concern the Covid-19 virus pandemic.

Question one, which would never have occurred to us in the past, is whether there is clean, lead-free, bacteria-free water in the fountains, the sinks, the toilets, and the showers in the schools.

We take it for granted that schools are safe places for our children and we assume that any water they will be drinking will be good for them. But that’s not necessarily the case.

In a low-income area on the West Coast of the United States, one of the teachers who has the youngest children in her classes was shocked to discover the water was not safe to drink. What could she do?

She did the only thing that teachers in low-income area schools have done and continued to do; she reached out for help. The help she sought was at a charity that provides materials, supplies, special seating, computers, and many other things to teachers in need. The teachers send in their requests, explaining why they need these things, and people worldwide contribute.

Before this charity came to being, the usual course was that teachers reached (and still do) into their own pockets to provide the supplies that our children need and which should have been supplied by their school systems. What are some of the supplies the teachers buy? How about chalk, pencils, and paper?

Why are teachers expected to pay for needed educational materials? They do not make sufficient salaries to meet their needs on anything but a marginal basis. It is discrimination without question. These are public schools, not private ones where everything is there for students, and teachers cannot carry the load for supplies.

The second question parents need to ask is about the safety of the water supplied to the students in the schools. It is assumed it’s healthy, but that is questionable.

Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.

An Associated Press investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states — in small towns and inner cities alike.

But the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied.

Water in schools isn’t safe in only small towns across the United States but in places like Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Los Angeles, where dangerous lead levels were discovered. The major culprit? The plumbing system in the schools may be old and contaminated. Now it stands unused for months, without periodic flushing, and the dangers increase.

Empty Schools Increase the Health Problems

What plans have local schools devised to handle the potential threats present in the water of isolated schools? One hotel in Spain had a solution to their 27-stories hotel’s 1,400 pipe taps; flush every five days. How many schools have done anything near that type of protection during times when schools are closed?

The CDC emphasizes how to minimize the risk of Covid-19 infections, but what about the water systems? The lack of care in maintaining school facilities in lower-income neighborhoods is well-known, but this virus places an additional layer of danger on top of the existing ones.

In 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 46% of public schools had conditions that contribute to poor indoor environmental quality, according to a Harvard University study. Asbestos, lead paint, unsafe drinking water, and insufficient heating and cooling are fixtures of public school districts nationwide.

But we needn’t go back eleven years to see that our schools are in dire need of changes, both in architecture and educational planning. There have been efforts to monitor water quality in schools, but when did you last hear of one?

Of course, the situation in Flint, Michigan, comes to mind, but that’s an entire town and the egregious actions of local politicians. But we’re talking about the entire United States and school water systems. Water pipes are the breeding grounds for more than Legionnaire’s Disease.

Who’s taking steps in your area to ensure the safe return of students to classes? What are they doing about the water well before the students return, and what are their plans for the future?

There are no Federal regulations related to adequate testing and maintenance of school water systems. School systems may decide to conduct water testing or not.

The post Schools May Foul the Drinking Water, Endanger and Damage Children appeared first on Medika Life.