My wife and I have no car, no TV, and a no-screens policy around our 8-month-old. We carry him around in an organic cotton wrap. His favorite toys are wood, his baby soap is plant-based, his only pacifier is his left thumb. He has yet to taste baby formula, food from a jar, or anything heated in a microwave. His bottles are BPA-free, and any plastic or chemical around him is also sold in Europe with its much stricter toxics policy. In short, we do everything in our power to keep our firstborn happy and healthy.
Yet none of that matters once we open our doors or windows and let in deceptively clean-looking but polluted air.
We can attempt to build a protective cocoon around our child and do so with fervor, but national policy—or the lack thereof—nixes all attempts to making a difference as parents. As soon as we breathe, or drink water, or do most anything else for that matter, we are connected to the planet and everyone else around us.
It’s one thing to put your child in the safest possible car seat. It’s quite another to learn that infant mortality goes up near highways. City streets aren’t much better, with all the idling cars. The gunk and soot from tailpipes and smokestacks alike cause allergies, asthma, hypertension, and all sorts of other ills.
It even starts before birth. Call me a crazed environmentalist, but I draw a line when it comes to pollutants in my kid’s amniotic fluid. I don’t like my son to be born pre-polluted. Yet there is little I can do individually, as long as coal plants are spewing mercury into the air.
That goes for local air and water pollution as much as for an even bigger problem with potentially much more severe consequences for any of our children. A ton of carbon dioxide pollution emitted today causes at least $20 worth of damage in our lifetime. The average American emits 20 of these tons a year. That’s quite a debt burden we are leaving our children. Sadly, much of it is virtually irreversible. We can bail out banks and entire countries. Bailing out the planet is a much scarier proposition.
The only way to tackle almost any kind of pollution is to become an engaged citizen and demand that polluters pay for the damage they cause.
It’s policy, not individual action, that makes all the difference here. Buy organic, buy local, do all the right things. But the best way to protect your child is first and foremost to vote.
From “Moms Clean Air Force”.
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2 Comments on "Helicopter Parents Should Worry About The Air"
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I know this does not speak to the core point of your article but FYI anyway. Just had a conversation last night with my niece a public health nurse specializing in moms and new babies. According to her the latest research shows that SIDS is reduced by 50% by putting babies to sleep on their backs and not their fronts or sides. Cheers, M
Is it more important to “demand that polluters pay for the damage they cause” or to stop the damage by stopping the pollution? “Polluter pays” is fine, as far as it goes, but the polluter then passes on the fine/fee/tax paid or operating expense incurred to all of those who buy its products or services. Arguably, the economic costs of stopping the pollution would be roughly equivalent to the magnitude of the fines/fees/taxes which might be imposed to penalize the polluters directly and everybody else indirectly. Of course, the big difference is that investments in pollution reduction do not necessarily provide a lavish new revenue stream to government, as fines/fees/taxes would.
Then, there is the issue, particularly with atmospherically well-mixed trace gases, of dealing with the pollution emissions of other nations, which are beyond our direct control. This issue would be exacerbated if the higher costs imposed here by penalizing polluters or demanding pollution reduction drove polluters to move their polluting activities to other locations, or to cease those activities and cede the market to foreign suppliers. Arguably, that process is already well advanced, as illustrated by the rapid growth of manufacturing in the developing countries.
“Don’t begin vast programs with half-vast ideas.”