New Report: Students, Toxins, & Environmental Racism

Posted by on February 6, 2004

[posted from Public Education Network newsblast]

STUDENTS, TOXINS, & ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

“Some 300,000 children in the United States are poisoned by lead every year, mostly children of color,” writes Erik Ness in his devastating look at the widespread epidemic of lead poisoning in urban school children. “How can policymakers seemingly ignore so much science that speaks to the very question of why some children can’t learn?” asks Ness. Ness examines lead poisoning in low-income communities and how it affects “failing schools”. In a companion essay titled “Teaching About Toxins,” Milwaukee elementary school teacher Kelley Dawson Salas shares lessons on lead poisoning and asthma she developed with her fourth-grade class. “I wanted them to understand asthma as a disease that targets poor people, people of color, and people living in cities,” she writes.