Daily News Archive From March 23, 2006 Say Environmental
Pollution Is Important Piece of Social Justice Debate Local,
state and federal policies have strived in recent decades to
limit such exposures. Policies have mandated the routine testing
of blood lead levels in Medicaid-eligible children, for
instance, while requiring that public health authorities
eliminate lead sources-such as lead-based paint and lead dust -
in high-risk homes. Similarly, environmental regulations have
reduced the use of certain pesticides. But despite the good
intentions, such preventive efforts are irregularly enforced,
often under-funded, and rarely targeted at those who need them
the most, write researchers at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, in the March/April issue of Child Development. "One of
the reasons we wrote this paper was to put together information
on the inequities in exposure to pollutants," says co-author
Colleen Moore, a UW-Madison professor of psychology and the
author of "Silent Scourge: Children, Pollution a