Jewish Perspectives on Environmental Health

Jewish Council for Public Affairs Agenda for 1999-2000 ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND JUSTICE

The JCPA supports local, state, federal, and international regulatory systems that prevent harm to all members of society from pollution. The JCPA favors measures that require the pre-market testing of all products and processes for their potential to harm public health and the environment; impose the cost of pollution remediation on polluters; provide incentives for pollution prevention; and promote the development of non-toxic alternatives to hazardous materials.

Pollution is widely suspected of contributing to emerging illnesses among children in the United States and other industrialized nations. Increases in certain childhood diseases, such as asthma, leukemia, and some learning disabilities continue to be unexplained. In the last two years, eight federally-funded Centers for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research have been established to research suspected environmental causes of disease patterns among children. Despite decades of awareness of widespread lead poisoning (a highly preventable problem), nearly one million children in the U.S. have blood lead levels high enough to cause irreversible damage.

A Jewish women's organization has joined forces with those of other faiths to defend children's environmental health.

Because many toxic substances, such as mercury, dioxin, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), build up in the environment, move up the food chain, and accumulate in human fatty tissues, the breast milk of most women on earth is so contaminated with persistent bioaccumulative toxic substances that it would not pass U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards. A mother passes on to her child a substantial percentage of her total body burden of accumulated toxic substances in her breast milk. While the many health benefits of breast-feeding still substantially outweigh the dangers, the purity of breast-milk is a salient indicator of human exposure to toxic chemicals.

One of the most effective means of reducing human exposure to toxic chemicals is requiring industries to report what they release into the air, water, and land. Since "right to know" requirements were established a decade ago, toxic releases have fallen nearly 50 percent. A new Environmental Protection Agency rule establishes or strengthens reporting requirements for 27 persistent bioaccumulative toxics. In the case of dioxin, an industrial byproduct that is toxic in very low doses, companies will be required to report if they generate as little as a tenth of a gram.

The organized Jewish community will be called upon to join with other faith communities, civil rights groups, and advocates for children, minorities, and the poor to protest these conditions and promote a precautionary approach to public health. Such an approach would provide that when pollution threatens harm to human health or the environment, prevailing measures — such as limitations on the use and release of toxic chemicals, as well as restrictions on new technologies — should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. Furthermore, the organized Jewish community will be called upon to encourage actively the development of technologies and products which do not require the release of toxic chemicals into the environment.