In every case we have the same worry: “what is this contamination doing to the children?” Whether the contamination is TCE in drinking water coming out of the kitchen tap and showerhead; PCE in “vapor” form in the air that the family breathes every moment in the home; or arsenic in the dirt in the family’s front yard where the children play, we worry most about what these chemicals are doing to the children. Because we know that these very dangerous chemicals are most dangerous of all to children. Each of The Pollution Lawyers – – Norm Berger, Mike Hayes, Ed Manzke, and me (Shawn Collins) – – is a lawyer second… and a father first. We understand that every parent’s most consuming duty is to keep his/her child safe, and we feel personally the anxiety of every parent we have come to meet in our cases that get hit with the horrible news that the home and neighborhood in which they have been raising their children is not the safe place they thought it was. So we were especially disturbed to learn recently that New York schoolchildren had been attending The Bronx New School for a 6 month period last year during which school officials knew (but the kids’ parents did not) that there were high levels of cancer-causing TCE in the air that the kids were breathing at the school every day. In fact, we wrote several blogs about it. [see those blogs here] Enter CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and his producer, Jen Christensen. They have been investigating contaminated schools as part of their Toxic America series and asked if we would contribute to their TV story. I was honored to be interviewed by Dr. Gupta’s team, and wanted you to know about the story CNN ran on “CNN Presents” this past weekend. They were kind enough to include me in the story, and you can watch it here if you’d like (my contribution is at time 3:20 of this video). We have sadly learned from years of fighting pollution and polluters that when children are in environmental harms’ way, it is irresponsible adults who have put them there. We believe that the CNN story sheds important light on a serious problem threatening many American children, and truly hope that, through this story and the work of dedicated people, our children will be much better protected against dangerous chemicals in their homes, neighborhoods, and schools.
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