Like exposure to Bush Administration, Lead Exposure to sicken future generations
New research is showing that lead exposure, like tobacco and asbestos, can have long-term effects on humans, with early lead exposure hastening brain aging later in life.
While the U.S. pushed through laws against the usage of lead in such things as paint and gasoline (fighting the lead industry the entire way), the Bush Administration’s anti-science beliefs and stance that business should be allowed to do anything to anyone at any time to make profits means that lead exposure will very likely be a future health problem for today’s children.
From the Environmental Working Group:
The Bush administration’s proposed 2005 budget cuts $35 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s lead poisoning prevention program, a 20 percent reduction from the previous year. The program pays for expert home evaluations and repairs to prevent young children from being exposed to lead-contaminated dust, soil and paint chips (Washington Post 2004). Primary prevention is the key to ending future lead poisoning and the related personal and social costs. Cuts to this program serve only to perpetuate unnecessary lead poisoning of future generations.
This is not the first time that the Bush administration has hindered lead poisoning prevention efforts. In 2002, in a move that catered to the interests of the lead industry, the Bush Administration shuffled the appointments to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention, replacing reputable public health and pediatric lead experts with panelists with a history of defending the lead industry in the courts.
More simply put, from Bradford Plumer of The New Republic (via N.Y. Times Opinionator Blog):
“The Bush administration loves lead. Loves it. They want it everywhere. Okay, that’s only a slight exaggeration: Back in 2002, the White House tried to stack an advisory committee on lead regulations with industry types. Last December, the administration announced that it would consider doing away with the standards that cut lead from gasoline, at the behest of battery makers and lead smelters. And its EPA has weakened a rule on removing lead paint from older residences.”
George W. Bush will spend tonight trying to talk up his conservative legacy, but his legacy is set in stone, as future generations will not only be forced to clean up his fiscal and foreign relations disasters, but they’ll also suffer physically from his and conservatism’s actions.
–WKW