Home > Latino Lives, Health At Risk
By Sunny Lewis, Environment News Service.
A disturbing new report shows the cumulative impact of
harmful Bush administration environmental policies on
Hispanic communitie
Maria Nolasco is raising three grandchildren who were
poisoned by lead paint. She lives in Bushwick, a low-
income section of Brooklyn, New York where houses
colored with toxic lead paint are common. Many Bushwick
children suffer from lead poisoning, which brings
permanent brain damage, learning disabilities, and
behavioral problems.
In Salinas, California, former farmworker Jorge
Fernandez is living with blurred vision, head, throat,
ear and abdomen aches, and rashes after working for 12
years with the pesticide methyl bromide in the fields
of California and Arizona. "I was never informed that
this was harmful," says Fernandez, who has been unable
to work since September 2003.
Nolasco and Fernandez are two of the people coping with
environmental health problems who are featured in the
Sierra Club’s first "Latino Communities at Risk
Report," released on Tuesday from the national
organization’s Washington, DC headquarters.
The Sierra Club says the report and a companion Spanish
language television ad detail "the cumulative impact of
harmful Bush administration environmental policies on
Hispanic communities."
"While Americans are diverted by war and millions of
job losses, the Bush administration is quietly
stripping protections from our air, water and lands,
seriously threatening our health and heritage and
putting Latino communities at risk," said Robbie Cox,
Sierra Club board member and former president.
The report features stories of people across the
country: in Las Vegas, Nevada; Milwaukee, Wisconsin;
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; St. Petersburg, Florida;
Fajardo, Puerto Rico; Fresno, California; Blanco, New
Mexico; Tar Heel, North Carolina; Tucson, Arizona; and
Reynosa, Mexico.
And the report tells the story of Fernandez and his
fellow farmworker Guillermo Ruiz who are suffering from
asthma linked to pollution of the air by the pesticide
and soil fumigant, methyl bromide.
Ruiz, who has also been out of work since September
2003 due to methyl bromide exposure, says, "They would
just give us a pair of plastic pants and a paper mask
which provided no protection. There were days when I
could not speak because within a couple of hours the
gas would burn your throat."
Most Powerful Toxic
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rates
methyl bromide in the most powerful class of toxic
chemicals. In California alone, 18 people have died and
hundreds have been poisoned by it.
The Sierra Club blames the Bush administration for
incidences of asthma related to methyl bromide. Earlier
this year the administration requested and was granted
exemptions from the Montreal Protocol that will allow
the continued use of thousands of pounds of methyl
bromide on agricultural fields although the chemical is
supposed to be banned in 2005 because it depletes the
ozone layer.
The administration acted at the request of the growers,
who say affordable alternatives to methyl bromide do
not exist, but it is the workers, the majority of them
Latinos, who bear the brunt of the methyl bromide
exposure.
"We get to do this job just because we are Mexicans,"
Fernandez says. "Why doesn’t Mr. Bush come and do it
instead?"
Asthma mortality rates are higher than average in the
Latino community, and asthma attacks are the leading
cause of school absence. Still, the Sierra Club says,
"the Bush administration has weakened Clean Air Act
protections, which will likely increase asthma related
air pollution."
Lead paint is a major source of lead poisoning for
children and can also affect adults, according to the
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In children,
lead poisoning can cause irreversible brain damage and
can impair mental functioning. It can retard mental and
physical development and reduce attention span. It can
also retard fetal development even at extremely low
levels of lead.
Old Lead, New Problems
U.S. law prohibited lead in paint as of 1978, so new
paint is free of lead. But in older buildings, such as
those in the once grand Bushwick section of Brooklyn,
expensive lead paint was used because of its superior
coating qualities that protected the wood from
weathering.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a
federal agency based in Atlanta, was scheduled to
consider stronger standards for lead poisoning, but has
taken no action.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups and
Congressional Democrats such as Representative Henry
Waxman, say the stalling began when the Bush
administration appointed people with direct ties to the
lead industry to oversee regulatory action.
The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) rejected
several experts that the CDC’s own staff scientists had
recommended for the committee in favor of people more
likely to oppose tightening the standard. At least two
of the new appointees had direct financial ties to the
lead industry.
Specifically, HHS failed to reappoint Dr. Michael
Weitzman of the University of Rochester and rejected
the nominations of Dr. Bruce Lanphear of the University
of Cincinatti and Dr. Susan Klitzman of the Hunter
College School of Health Sciences, who have each
published numerous papers in the scientific literature
on lead poisoning.
In their place, HHS proposed several individuals with
ties to the lead industry, including Dr. William
Banner, who has served as an expert witness for
Sherwin-Williams paint company, a maker of lead paint,
and Dr. Joyce Tsuji, who worked for two companies that
represented lead firms.
Dr. Banner testified in a 2001 court case that a lead
level of 70 micrograms per deciliter of blood is safe
for children’s brains. This position is not shared by
any expert or scientific organization independent of
the lead industry.
The current federal blood level that defines lead
poisoning is 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter. But
since poisoning may occur at lower levels than
previously thought, various federal agencies are
considering whether this level should be lowered
further so that lead poisoning prevention programs will
have the latest information on testing children for
lead poisoning.
Dr. Sergio Piomelli, another new member of the CDC
committee, said at the October 2002 meeting, "Before
some reporter detects it, I would like you to know that
I was called a few months ago from somebody in the lead
industry ... and asked if I don’t mind if they
nominated me for this committee. I said, ’Yes.’"
Preventing Poisoning
Stronger lead paint regulations would have helped Maria
Nolasco of Brooklyn in her fight for a citywide lead
law that would save other children from the same fate
as her three lead-poisoned grandchildren.
Working with Make the Road by Walking, a Bushwick-based
organization, Nolasco and other community leaders,
along with Sierra Club’s local Environmental Justice
Committee, joined with the New York City Coalition to
End Lead Poisoning - a network of medical doctors,
labor unions, and environmental, tenant and low-income
housing groups. They advocated for a stronger city law
to prevent childhood lead poisoning.
The coalition had hoped the federal government would
change the regulations in favor of greater protection,
but the CDC’s standard for lead paint has not changed.
Nolasco said, "Lead poisoning has been devastating to
the children, to me and to our entire family."
"Every community, every person deserves environmental
protection," said Alejandro Queral, Sierra Club advisor
to the Environmental Partnerships program. "The Bush
administration should strictly enforce existing
environmental laws, and use modern technology to
protect all of our communities so that our kids have
clean water to drink and clean air to breathe."
The Sierra Club says America’s Latino community is
"disproportionately at risk."
The report cites studies showing that Latino
communities are located in the most polluted areas of
cities. They show:
* Three out of every five Latinos live in communities
near uncontrolled toxic waste sites;
* Eighty percent of Latinos live in the 437 counties
with the country’s worst air, compared to 57 percent
of Anglos and 65 percent of African Americans; *
Ninety percent of farm workers are Latinos and are
exposed to toxic pesticides.
To read the ’Latino Communities at Risk Report,’ online
in Spanish or English or to view the companion Spanish-
language television ad, visit
www.sierraclub.org/comunidades.
Sunny Lewis is founder and editor-in-chief of
Environment News Service, an independently owned,
continuous, real-time wire service covering the
environment.