Pesticides could make kids dumb, diesel emissions make them sick
You know how we say we shouldn’t wreck the planet for “future generations”? Turns out we’re wrecking them too! A study from Indiana University says children conceived in the summer score lower on tests in school, and suggests that in-womb pesticide exposure may be to blame. “To recognize that what we put into our environment has potential pandemic effects on pregnancy outcome and possibly on child development is a momentous observation, which hopefully will help transform the way humanity cares for its world,” says IU’s James Lemons. Meanwhile, states are struggling to clean up school-bus diesel emissions — linked to asthma and lung cancer — in the absence of $1 billion in cleanup funds pledged by Congress in 2005. More than 100,000 of the nation’s 390,000 diesel school buses don’t meet emissions regulations; California approved a $200 million cleanup, while a similar plan in Texas stalled out — partly because, says the state’s appropriations committee chair, “the science is not very good.”
