Bad Deeds: Money Over Health

 

Texas School District Prefers Money Over Children’s Health – In some Texas districts, school is also a place children go to get sick.

Several schools—located on a figurative gold mine over the gas-rich Barnett Shale formation—are accepting money from drilling companies itching to tap deposits beneath and around their land. In one case, in return for leases that allow Hillwood and Williams Production to drill exploratory gas wells around Texas’s Argyle High School, the district has already received $680,000 in payments.

But while that money may be used to pay teachers’ salaries and run down a district deficit, the payoff for students is far less clear.

Since drilling recently began recently, kids have reported suffering asthma, nosebleeds, dizziness, disorientation, nausea and noxious smells, according to The Denton Record-Chronicle.

Now, a local activist organization, the Argyle-Bartonville Communities Alliance, has organized in the last year to collect health data and raise awareness in the parent community. The drilling of dozens more gas wells is already set to proceed on two sites within a half-mile of not only the high school but also the intermediate school and—getting them while they’re young—the elementary school as well.

You can support the work of the concerned community by telling the Argyle school board to do everything within its power to protect this district kids.

The school got the community into this mess in the first place, and should be fighting for the students’ overall welfare—not the welfare of its bank balance. Sign the petition at the link.

 

Government Prefers Dairy Profits Over People’s Health – Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.

Dairy Management spent millions of dollars on research to support a national advertising campaign promoting the notion that people could lose weight by consuming more dairy products, records and interviews show. The campaign went on for four years, ending in 2007, even though other researchers — one paid by Dairy Management itself — found no such weight-loss benefits.

When the campaign was challenged as false, government lawyers defended it, saying the Agriculture Department “reviewed, approved and continually oversaw” the effort.

Dr. Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health and a former member of the federal government’s nutrition advisory committee, said: “The U.S.D.A. should not be involved in these programs that are promoting foods that we are consuming too much of already. A small amount of good-flavored cheese can be compatible with a healthy diet, but consumption in the U.S. is enormous and way beyond what is optimally healthy.” Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk.

Regards,

Jim