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The Way We Live Now
The Toxic Paradox
Ken Schles

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By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Published: February 5, 2009

There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer riskto freak out a parent, especially one of the hypereducated, ecoconscious ilk. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA Today investigation of air quality around the nation's schools singled out those in the smugly green hamlet of Berkeley, Calif., as being among the worst in the country. The city's public high school, as well as a number of day care centers, preschools, elementary and middle schools (including the one my daughter attends), fell in the lowest 10 percent — some in the bottom 1 percent. Industrial pollution in our town had supposedly turned students into living science experiments inhaling a laboratory's worth of manganese, chromium and nickel each day. This in a city that mandates school cafeterias to serve organic meals. Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic recess.
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NOTE: In the industrisl pollution in our town had supposedly turened students into living science experiments inhaling a laboratory's worth of manganese.

Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a sometimes-acrimonious, acronym-laced battle over its validity: over the culpability of the steel-casting factory on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children's health and over what, if anything, ought to be done. With all sides presenting their own experts throwing down the gauntlets of conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly incessant health scares we confront, like panic over lead in synthetic athletic turf or Bisphenol A in dental sealants? Rather than just another wacky episode in the town that brought you tree sitters and the Naked Guy, this latest drama, repeated in various permutations in so many communities, is a crucible for how today's parents perceive risk, how we try to keep our kids safe — whether it's possible to keep them safe — in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, "safe" could even mean.

Every morning, as part of their daily routine, my husband slathers our daughter with all-natural sun block that claims to ward off skin cancer without causing something worse. Because of suspected harmto children's reproductive systems, we don't microwave in plastic or use shampoo containing phthalates. We limit tuna, since elevated mercury levels are linked to learning delays. Better safe than sorry, I say. But safe from what? And, more to the point, safe from which? My own mother forbade me to drink the water in the Minneapolis suburb where I spent my teens: creosote from a closed plant had leached into several of the town's wells. Although they were shut down, she remained suspicious. Better safe than sorry, she said. Still, during six years of daily showers, my skin would have absorbed plenty of whatever may have been lurking there. Could that be why I scored lower on my SAT's than I thought I should have? Might the creosote have contributed to my breast-cancer diagnosis at age 35? Or was the culprit the pesticide sprayed each year over my summer camp to combat mosquitoes? (To be fair, we were told to put our pillows under our blankets beforehand.)

"There's no way around the uncertainty," says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children's health. "That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren't going to know if they do." A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that jittery parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure (with the exception of lead, which still threatens the health of millions of children). To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It's the dangers parents can't — and may never — quantify that gobump in the night. That's why I've purged my pantry of microwave popcorn (the bags are coated with a potential carcinogen), but although I've lived blocks from a major fault line for more than 12 years, I still haven't bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.

Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, calls that skewed response "intuitive toxicology." When the potential impact of a chemical is catastrophic — cancer or birth defects — we tend to act from the gut, ignoring the actual probability of harm. I wouldn't expect parents to have the same risk tolerance as experts. Yet, I wonder sometimes if avoiding the vinyl lunch box — I don't care if it has "Hello Kitty" on the front — is just another blade in a helicopter parent's propeller, another version of the overzealous monitoring that has produced kids who leave for college without ever having crossed the street by themselves. In this era when children symbolize emotional fulfillment rather than free household labor, we cling to the belief that if we just do everything right — starting with what a woman eats before she's even pregnant — we can protect them from pain or failure or sadness. We can make them perfect and, in the process, prove ourselves beyond reproach. But of course, that control is illusory: even if it were possible to do everything "right," it could still come out wrong. What if it wasn't the creosote or the pesticide that gave me cancer but something even more frightening — plain old bad luck? What is a parent supposed to do about that?

NOTE:poul slovic,he is the professor at the university of origon call that skwed response
"intuitive texicology.

As it turned out, further investigation showed that my daughter and her classmates were not soaking up heavy metals with their three R's. That's a relief, but how long until something equally scary surfaces? Diesel fumes anyone? Tin-can liners? Chlorinated swimming pools? And how do we know that whatever replaced the bad stuff in baby bottles is safer? You can't raise your kid in a bubble. Especially one made of plastic.

Peggy Orenstein, a contributing writer, is the author of the memoir "Waiting for Daisy."
Next Article in Magazine (16 of 21) » A version of this article appeared in print on February 8, 2009, on page MM17 of the New York edition.
Download the historic Nov. 5 issue of The New York Times Electronic Edition.
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* A New Cigarette Hazard: 'Third-Hand Smoke' (January 3, 2009)
* NATIONAL BRIEFING | WASHINGTON; E.P.A. To Ban Use of a Pesticide (July 25, 2008)
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* Canada Takes Steps to Ban Most Plastic Baby Bottles (April 19, 2008)

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