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For Immediate Release
Contact: Pam Miller or Varsha Mathrani
Friday July 1, 2005
(907) 222-7714
MEDIA RELEASE
Group launches Healthy Children's Initiative to protect
children's health
Today in Anchorage, Alaska Community Action on Toxics
(ACAT), with support from citizens, deliver the children’s
health initiative to the Lieutenant Governor’s office with
the required 100 initial signatures and 3 prime sponsors.
The Alaska Children’s Health
Protection Act will protect children from the harmful
effects of pesticides. In the next months, the organization
will gather signatures from voters throughout Alaska to
support placement of the initiative on the November 2006
ballot. Voters will then be able to require schools, both
public and private, and licensed child care facilities to
use the healthiest, least dangerous alternatives to
pesticides first, with pesticides used only as a last
resort.
Such policies are already in place
in Anchorage schools. In 2000, the Anchorage School District
adopted a policy of using least toxic pest control measures.
The policy works and has protected the district's students
and employees from the dangerous and health-compromising
effects of pesticides, not to mention saved the school
district money. It’s time to carry these protections to
school children statewide and to children in child care.
Exposure to pesticides endangers
human health. Children are especially at risk since their
bodies and brains are still developing. “I see a lot of
children in my practice—children with learning disabilities,
attention deficit disorders, autism and other developmental
disorders. In each case, environmental toxicity is never far
from my mind because children are so much more susceptible
to toxins like pesticides,” stated Dr. Adam Grove. The list
of illnesses associated with pesticide exposures is long.
Pesticides are linked with birth defects, asthma, endocrine
disruption, genetic mutations, acute poisoning, decreased
sperm counts, impaired neurological development in
developing children, lymphoma, leukemia, as well as other
cancers.
Gathering of the first 100
signatures began on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 at an event to
honor Alaska Youth for Environmental Action (AYEA). These
youth, most who are too young to vote or even to collect
petition signatures, recognize the harmful effects of
pesticides. AYEA was instrumental in encouraging the
Anchorage School District to adopt its policy and it is
appropriate that this event launch the initiative. Mayor
Mark Begich and Anchorage Assembly member Pamela Jennings
were among those who first signed the initiative.
For more information, please contact: Pamela Miller, (907)
222-7714; Dr. Adam Grove, (907) 561-2330; or Jane Kava,
(907) 984-6614
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