infants - The Environment Report

Government Bans Lead Candle Wicks

The government is banning candles that contain lead in their wicks. A consumers’ group says the ban comes decades later than it should have come. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The government is banning candles that contain lead in their wicks. A consumers’ group says the
ban comes decades later than it should have come. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:

A government agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, says it will ban lead-wick
candles beginning in October of this year. Lead is used in a small percentage of candles to make
the wicks straight. But lead can cause neurological damage, especially for infants and fetuses. In
the 1970s, the candle industry made a voluntary agreement with the government to stop using lead.
Peter Lurie is with the consumers’ organization, the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.

“When the voluntary agreement failed, we re-petitioned the government and now, 30 years later,
we finally have what we all saw in the first place. In the meantime, of course, thousands of
American consumers have been needlessly exposed to significant levels of lead right there in the
home. And the blame for that can be put squarely at the foot of the industry and also to an agency
that simply didn’t do its job.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says it had an agreement with the industry. When it
became clear that the agreement was being violated, it took the action to ban the lead wicks.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

African American Health Problems Tied to Air Pollution

A new study shows African Americans are disproportionately affected by power plant pollution. The study finds most African Americans are concentrated in urban areas, closer to power plants. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, health problems in the community such as asthma have been tied to air pollution:

Transcript

The study shows blacks are hospitalized for asthma attacks at more than three times the rate of whites, and their death rate from asthma is twice that of whites.

Brian Urbaszewski with the American Lung Association says there’s a direct link between air pollution and asthma, especially within the black community.

“African Americans just tend to have a higher rate of asthma, so you have the people who are more likely to be sick in an area where the air is more likely to trigger an asthma attack.”

In one Great Lakes state, 90 percent of blacks live in counties with air pollution levels that exceed federal health standards.

African-American babies are in greater danger of sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory mortality because they live in more polluted areas.

The groups that put out the study want stricter laws to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.

Therapeutic Diapers

Each year in the United States, about four-hundred thousand fulltermbabies will be treated for jaundice. Since a baby’s liver and otherorgans aren’t fully developed, they often can’t process a substancecalled bilirubin (billy-roo-bin). The bilirubin causes a yellowishtinge to the skin and is usually treated with phototherapy.Now, one woman has found a way to speed up this process. The GreatLakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports: