Mercury Mama's Sweet Dream

Many moons ago, when I was a young pregnant teacher, I taught in a private school that was housed in an old Victorian building. The brick building had many charming features such as fireplaces, ornate moldings and glittering chandeliers in the classrooms. It also had bookcases high up to the ceiling. In my classroom - the Language Arts room, the top shelves held vintage children's books, some rare first edition classics. The Social Studies classroom had ancient yellowing maps that dangled down from the upper shelves. On the tippy top shelf of the Science room, far out of reach from small hands, stood vintage glass beakers with unidentified liquids from years before when the building had been a doctor’s office.

One bright spring day, I poked my 7-month belly into the Science room to lunch with a fellow teacher. A few kids joined us to show off a cool stick they found in the woods by the playground. The stick looked just like a boomerang. They were raring to fling it, and had come to ask for permission. Before an explanation on why it would not be appropriate to set the stick into flight, one of the children impulsively flung it. The stick hit the top shelf broadside, sending the antique beakers and their contents smashing down. There was glass and liquid everywhere.

Within minutes, the other teacher, kids and I were whisked off to the hospital. An administrator had called when he caught wind of what happened. I had never been a patient in a hospital, let alone set foot in a screaming ambulance. The kids needed me not to freak out, so I stayed relatively calm. Until…

In a composed manner, the EMT explained the seriousness of the situation to the children. That was the exact moment my blissful, uneventful pregnancy got derailed. In my 29 year-old panicked pregnant state, I heard one of the doctors say we need to watch her for poisoning:

"Mercury and a motherlode of other chemicals could have been lurking in those beakers."

"MERCURY! Isn’t that the stuff in glass thermometers that you weren’t supposed bite down hard on and break?"

“Yes, there are three kinds…for a pregnant woman, mercury can be especially damaging.”

3 Types Of Mercury

1. Elemental mercury is found in thermometers. The inhalation of fumes from this type of mercury is highly toxic. Mercury can cause significant amounts of neurological damage to babies and children.

2. Mercury salts come from industrial emissions. Breathing or ingesting mercury salts can harm the kidneys.

3. Organic mercury is what leaches into the food chain. Water can become polluted during the manufacturing of certain types of energy production. The mercury can accumulate in shellfish and fish. Organic mercury acts similarly to elemental mercury.

Yikes! Is your heart racing as fast as mine right now? I’m calming myself so I can tell you the rest of the story…

After hours of blood and urine testing and a full ER exam, I was given the green light and told to go home and watch for any unusual symptoms. UNUSUAL SYMPTOMS! With pregnancy dreams hopped up on overdrive, even unprovoked, every possible baby horror was passing through my sleep state. Now ALL of my dreams became punctuated with a capital “M” for MERCURY.

This is the first time I’ve told this story in the 25 years since my daughter was born. We were lucky - there were no “unusual symptoms”. As I am about to celebrate my beautiful, healthy daughter’s birthday (she was born on Mother’s Day weekend), those dreams are coming back to me. Did politicians think when they sided with corporate energy lobbyists to block limits on mercury pollution that we moms wouldn't notice? Let's prove them sorely wrong, and stand up for our kids by protecting the Clean Air Act.

Here's the rub: No matter how old our children become, there are things we can protect them from and things we can't (wayward boomerangs). Mercury spewing into the bodies of pregnant women and children, and accumulating in our food chain, we must stop.

What do I want for my children this Mother's Day? Oh, that's simple: Sweet Clean Air Dreams.

This post is part of the MCAF Blog Carnival: A Mother's Day Gift. We invite you to join the Carnival and tell us what you want to give your kids for Mother's Day.

Earth Day 2011

Hey, order there – Happy Earth Day! Since its inception in 1970, pilule Earth Day has raised awareness to the fragile state of our planet. As a global holiday for over 40 years, malady celebrating Earth Day has become a staple in our minds and hearts. It galvanizes us to stop and think about how we can preserve, protect and preserve in our common goals for the future.

Don’t let anyone tell you that reduce, reuse and recycle, green, eco-friendly and sustainable are meaningless cliches. Yes, they get overused and their definitions can get watered down and greenwashed. But, that’s no reason to throw in the towel. It just means we need to continue to answer the hard questions creatively, and collectively about climate, our health, and the environment.

What I find so remarkable about our common struggle is how we all approach this goal through the eyes of our rich and diverse cultures. Actions come in all shades of green, and once we become infused with knowledge, learn a few tools, and make some changes, we can look into our unique lives and view the future through a new lens. Think of it as the eco-filter that keeps our planet smiling.

Last year, I put together a popular comprehensive ABC guide for Care2, with ideas and tips – some you no doubt have heard about before, and others that may have never even entered through your eco-filter. These simple tips are not rocket science, but collectively they can become the springboard for important discussions and actions about the future of our planet.

OK, pep talk over - Let’s start reciting…

A is for Adjust Your Thermostat B is for Both Sides of the Paper are Usable C is for Cruise Control: To Save You Gas D is for Diaper With a Conscience E is for Eat Organic F is for Fly With an E-Ticket G is for Go Vegetarian Once a Week H is for Hang Dry I is for Invest in Your Own Coffee Cup J is for Junk Mail – Cut it Out of Your Life K is for Keep Your Fireplace Damper Closed L is for Local: The Way To Go M is for Make a Bag And Use It N is for Newspapers – Recycle and Consider Alternatives O is for Old Cell Phones Need a New Life P is for Plastic Bottles Q is for Q-Tips R is for Recycle Glass S is for Shower Instead of Baths T is for Turn Off Computers at Night U is for Use Fewer Paper Napkins V is for Vacations W is for Wash in Cold Water X is for X Out Your Phone Book Y is for Your Enemy is Greenwashing Z is for Zipcars Can Replace Your Car

Credit: NASA

Not A Scientist…

I am not a scientist. I am not a politician. I am a mom. I am a teacher. I am a writer. I am an environmentalist. I want to protect my family. I care about the planet. When I became increasingly concerned about the food my family eats, the oceans we swim in, the cars we drive and the air we breathe, it became a personal choice to share and engage my readers in a dialogue about creating a lifestyle that supports our environment.

Joining the Moms Clean Air Force has opened up my eyes wider to the issue of clean air. But, just because I consider something vastly important, doesn’t mean I expect you to jump on the bandwagon. I wish you would, but I know creating clean air is not like selling a basket of locally-grown organic vegetables. People get that. They know those fresh goodies will nourish their bodies. They understand how being a locavore will nourish their souls. The message of saving the Clean Air Act is a complex and seemingly abstract problem with scientific theories, historical data, cost analysis and politics.

Just like we need to nourish our bodies and souls with good, clean food and create vibrant communities by shopping local, we need clean air to secure our health.

So let me repeat: I am not a scientist. I knew the Clean Air Act, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the States, has saved thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. But, I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to reading about babies dying and cancer rates. My biggest fear about joining the Moms Clean Air Force was that I would have to sort through stacks and stacks of reports, regulations, cost anaylsis and really nasty health studies that would leave me glazed over and paralyzed with fear. Although I am a teacher, I am a visual learner like my right-sided brain kids. Scientific technical reading rarely engages my interest for too long.

The exact opposite happened. I do believe informed decisions come from knowledge. I found a nifty tool from the Union of Concerned Scientists that helps embrace the stats. This "ticker" "shows the increase in cumulative net benefits as a result of the Clean Air Act since 1970. The source data for this calculation comes from two EPA reports."

It is scary to imagine that the Clean Air Act is under constant threat. Whether you are a scientist or not, there is one thing we all need to understand - clean air is something we have controlled and lessened...and we all have the power to be part of the solution to continue to preserve clean air.

A Lesson We Can Learn From The Lorax (Again)

The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss has been the go-to environmental book for kids since it's publication in 1971. With Earth Day just around the corner, The Lorax will be read in schools and homes throughout the U.S. this month.

Let's refresh the events of this cautionary tale: The Once-ler devised devious ways of cutting down Truffula trees for the "biggering and biggering" of his manufacturing operation. The smogulous smoke that spewed into the air from his Thneed factory made the Lorax "cough, whiff, sneeze, snuffle, snarggle, sniffle, and croak." The beautiful Swomee swans were no longer able to sing, so the Lorax sends the birds away to find cleaner air. The Once-ler "biggered" to the point where he poisoned the Lorax's eco-lovin’ life with polluted water, polluted air, and left him in a sunless panorama of Truffula stumps. Poor Lorax.

Where We Were Before the Clean Air Act, when air pollution plagued the world, the ramifications of acid rain and smog were a blip on the radar of most folks. When awareness kicked in, and the ecological science began to mount, it became a priority to legislate for clean air. At the time, environmentalism was mostly a non-partisan issue, paving the way for the Clean Air Act.

Where We Are The EPA statistics indicate that since the Clean Air Act, the US has decreased toxic fume emissions by 109 million tons, which has reduced pollution and improved the air quality 48 per cent. This week the Senate voted down several pro-pollution amendments that would have decimated the Clean Air Act and kept the EPA from protecting the quality of our air and water. This is great news!

UNLESS… Do you know there is a pro-polluter lobby? It is unfathomable to me that such a thing exists. Didn’t everyone grow up heeding the Lorax's message that we are all interconnected, and collectively we need to take responsibility for the health of our planet and its inhabitants?

The Moms Clean Air Force is not willing to hand over a world to our kids like the one the Lorax left behind. We can't forget the importance of reorienting environmental values away from pure economic and political points of view, and towards common sense science. We can not relent, because the Once-ler-type bully polluters are figuring out ways of "biggering" and continuing to blow their smogulous smoke at our kids.