Environmental Toxins and Children: Exploring the Risks : Hearing Before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, Second Session, Part 1

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Presents the report of a series of hearings on environmental toxins and the risks to children, examining the best available evidence about children's vulnerability to environmental toxins and the concern about child health and safety. Some of the toxins discussed are lead poisoning, pesticides and their residues, asbestos in schools, and other agriculturally related toxins effecting children in rural and low-income areas.

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Page 169 - There is also a choice to be made between using synthetic pesticides and raising the level of plants' natural toxins by breeding. It is not clear that the latter approach, even where feasible, is preferable. For example, plant breeders produced an insect-resistant potato, which has to be withdrawn from the market because of its acute toxicity to humans due to a high level of the natural plant toxins solanine and chaconine (12). This analysis on the levels of synthetic pollutants in drinking water...
Page 48 - Sec. 1304.1-3 HEAD START PROGRAM GOALS (a) The Head Start Program is based on the premise that all children share certain needs, and that children of low-income families, in particular, can benefit from a comprehensive developmental program to meet those needs.
Page 169 - ... Certain cultivated crops have become popular in developing countries because they thrive without costly synthetic pesticides. However, the tradeoffs of cultivating some of these naturally pest-resistant crops are that they are highly toxic and require extensive processing to detoxify them. For example, cassava root, a major food crop in Africa and South America, is quite resistant to pests and disease; however, it contains cyanide at such high levels that only a laborious process of washing,...
Page 169 - For example, cholinesterase inhibitors are a common class of pesticides, both man-made and naturaL Solanine and chaconine (the main alkaloids in potatoes) are cholinesterase inhibitors and were introduced generally into the human diet about 400 years ago with the dissemination of the potato from the Andes. They can be detected in the blood of almost all people (12, 90). Total alkaloids are present at a level of 15,000 ixg per 200-g potato with not a large safety factor (about sixfold) from the toxic...
Page 79 - Canal remain suspect even when restoration is certified as satisfactory by prestigious bodies like the Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Page 168 - DDT, the first major synthetic insecticide, replaced lead arsenate, a major carcinogenic pesticide used before the modern era; lead arsenate is even more persistent than DDT. When the undesirable bioconcentration and persistence of DDT and its lethal effects on some birds were recognized it was prudently phased out, and less persistent chemicals were developed to replace it. Examples of these newer chemicals are the synthetic pyrethroids that disrupt the same sodium-channel in insects as DDT, are...
Page 146 - Effect of age at treatment on the incidence and location of neurogenic tumors induced in Wistar rats by a single dose of N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea - Naito M..
Page 105 - The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees longer and make them look better.
Page 3 - Rostenkowski, chairman of the Subcommittee on Health of the Ways and Means Committee, and my response thereto.
Page 168 - California lowered the permissible worker exposure more than a hundred-fold. Despite the fact that the epidemiology on EDB in highly exposed workers does not show any significant effect, the uncertainties of our knowledge make it important to have strict rules about workers, because they can be exposed chronically to extremely high doses.

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