Children's health

Like others across the country, this Thursday I'll be joining extended family and friends to celebrate each other and the earth's bounty. I look forward to meeting up with cousins coming to town from distant cities, and enjoying the yummy dishes we'll all contribute to the feast.

I'm also hoping we keep the acephate, methamidophos and chlorothalonil off the menu. (Easy for me to say, right?) Sadly, according to government testing, these hard-to-pronounce pesticides are among those commonly found on green beans. And they're not good for you.

We're excited. The report we released earlier this month — A Generation in Jeopardy — is getting people talking about how pesticides are harming our children, and what we can do about it.

A national conversation is a first, important step. Next up? Decisive action that gets harmful pesticides out of kids' daily lives.

Yesterday the American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in on organic food. They found that "an organic diet reduces children's exposure to pesticides," and highlighted studies linking pesticides with many of the childhood health harms included in PAN's recent report, A Generation in Jeopardy.

Unfortunately, media coverage of APA's report has been all over the map. And given the power of headlines to shape public debate in ways that directly impact policymakers' appetite for taking on tough issues, this failure on the part of news desks and editors to report the substance of the science accurately is a serious problem.

Do school lunches bring back memories of massive ladels of gravy piled onto heaps of mashed potatoes, processed chicken nuggets and canned fruit?

Well, luckily this picture’s starting to change. President Obama has declared this week National School Lunch Week to shine a light on the school lunch program that began under president Harry Truman — and how it's being moved in a healthier direction. As the mom of a daughter who recently started kindergarten, I'd say it's high time.

Last week PAN released a new report, A Generation in Jeopardy: How pesticides are undermining our children's health & intelligence with events in 10 cities. The report has landed well, with media outlets across the country spotlighting the growing body of evidence that pesticides are one of the reasons that children are less healthy today.

We're excited this national conversation is underway — and we could not have made it happen without the support of our PAN Partners. Here in Minnesota we worked with doctors, moms and advocacy organizations who are also working in the state to keep kids safe from toxic chemicals.