EFFECTS ON LEARNING     

Published: Wednesday, October 18, 2000

Timothy E. Wirth Commentator

Wirth, a former U.S. senator from Colorado and undersecretary of state, is president of the United Nations Foundation. Distributed by KRT News Service. 

POLLUTIONS ILL EFFECTS ON LEARNING INCREASINGLY CLEAR 

Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore speak passionately about education: investing in it, reforming it and testing it.  If they are sincere, both candidates have an opportunity to advance their concerns beyond pedagogical structure by drawing connections between education and environmental health, a relationship far more important than might be first apparent 

In the past decade, researchers have found that development in the womb and during infancy are critical to a child's lifelong intellectual capacity. During this period, minute amounts of critical nutrients and equally small amounts of neurotoxins can boost or retard a child's intellect. Inadequate levels of iodine, for example, which the thyroid needs for healthy physical and mental growth in the first months of life, can impair the brain's development. Similarly, elevated amounts of lead in children decrease intelligence. Each 10-point rise in lead levels robs almost three points from a child's performance on IQ tests.

Researchers also have raised serious concerns about the increase of learning and behavioral disorders among children. Nearly 12 million kids -- one out of every six -- suffer from learning, developmental or behavioral disorders, and the number of learning disabled children enrolled in special education programs increased nearly 200 percent between 1977 and 1994.

Herbert Needleman, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, has found elevated levels of lead in delinquentyouths regardless of sex or race. He estimates as much as 38 percent of delinquency may be attributable to high lead exposure during childhood.

Pesticides pose another threat. Researchers have found traces of Dursban, a widely used insecticide with the potential for neurological damage to fetuses and young children, in the urine of 90 percent of children in the United States.

These findings raise serious social and economic concerns. Consider the effects of a hypothetical slip in the average American IQ of just five points, from 100 to 95. If scores across the board dropped in this way, the number of people classified in the ``mental retardation'' range would increase from 6 million to 9.4 million. At the other end of the scale, the number of ``gifted'' individuals would drop by 60 percent, from 6 million to 2.4 million.

The costs of providing for more people who were mentally retarded, and the loss of creativity and intellectual leadership from a smaller number of “gifted” people would be devastating

The effects of chemical exposures on education and productivity are even more sobering if we consider developing countries. UNICEF estimates that iodine deficiency has lowered mental capacity in some 300 million people worldwide. The percentage of children affected by lead poisoning in the major cities of developing nations also is staggering. In some African cities, it can be as high as 90 percent. Parts of the United States are not far behind: More than 60 percent of inner-city children in Philadelphia suffer from lead poisoning.

Dealing with such massive toxic exposures requires global cooperation.

International treaties are the most effective way to control chemical contamination in the environment. The United Nations is now negotiating such an accord to reduce the release of highly toxic persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. Virtually all of the 12 chemicals covered by the proposal, including PCBs, chlordane and DDT, are known or suspected to interfere with developmental processes in the womb and during infancy.  Implementation of the POPs treaty will, in a single stroke, improve every nation's intellectual resources and potential for economic growth.

But we can make such a dramatic improvement to the futures of hundreds of millions of children only by rethinking our regulation of chemicals and by redefining our notion of educational opportunity. Others, beyond the scientific and medical establishment, must act as advocates for children: superintendents of schools, national education and finance ministers, and candidates for national office.

In a global economy in which the ultimate resource of a nation is the intellectual and creative capacity of its people, it's not surprising that polls show education to be one of Americans' top concerns. But while both candidates have promised to dramatically change education in this country, the debate needs to be expanded to make the connection between environmental pollution and children's ability to learn. Only then will no child be left behind, and only then will education be the No. 1 priority