FOREWORD
by Meryl Streep

There's a saying in Bangladesh about the theater: To be a good actor, you should know the words and movements and execute them perfectly; to be a great actor, you should know the words and movements and execute them perfectly, and also be able to invest them with great meaning; but to be a master actor, you should know the words and movements and execute them perfectly, invest them with great meaning, and be a farmer.

I am an actress, not a farmer. But as a mother, I've had my hands in the dirt and my eyes on the sky the whole time. I'm a caretaker and a cultivator of a sort, and I think the wisdom in the adage above applies not just to acting but to parenting as well.

As a parent, you always try to do the right thing. You teach your kids not only how to take care of themselves, but to look for meaning in what they do, and to contribute to society. You also understand that the "right" environment in which to raise healthy children is a healthy environment--a place where the earth that feeds them (and us), the air they breathe, and the water they drink and bathe in are not poisoned. You don't have to be a farmer to know this.

In 1989, when my children were three, six, and ten years old, I read a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council entitled Intolerable Risk. It outlined the risks posed to infants and children by pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables. One chemical dominated the statistics--Alar, a substance that was sprayed on apples to regulate growth and enhance color, and had been under review by the Environmental Protection Agency for three years previous. The American Academy of Pediatrics had already recommended that it be banned. Alar was a systemic additive--meaning it could not be washed off--and it had strong cancer-causing properties so it presented an accumulating threat to growing bodies over the long term. Babies, children, and pregnant women were especially at risk. The faster metabolism of developing babies, and, pound for pound, their greater relative intake of these residues were troubling. Together with other exposures to toxic chemicals in the physical environment, this threat to children's health needed to be communicated broadly.

I gathered some of my Connecticut neighbors and we formed a group called Mothers and Others to inform parents about the findings of this report. We began in our town, alerting and educating families, then the word got out to others--grocery stores, restaurants, relatives, and friends. We wanted to change the way toxic chemicals were regulated, we wanted better access to foods that were not "treated," and we wanted to let parents know that even a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables (among other things) might contain certain substances that could cross the placenta and affect their unborn children. That once the child was born, these toxic chemicals would enter their bodies via breast milk. That, once weaned, those little bodies would take in foods that might contain substances that could prove problematic to their health, and to their mental and reproductive capacity later in their lives.

Because of my media access, I was able to get the word out via speeches, television appearances, and testimony before Congress. Our group, with the support and guidance of numerous other committed and informed individuals and groups, successfully campaigned against the use of the chemical Alar. Not only that, but broader benefits came out of our campaign:

• In 1993, after a five-year study brought into being by the Alar controversy, the National Academy of Sciences confirmed children's unique and heightened vulnerabilities in its report Pesticides in the Diet of Infants and Children.

• Previous to this, allowable levels for pesticide residue in the body were based on data from full-grown men. After this report, the tolerances were changed to reflect children's special vulnerabilities, and President Clinton signed new regulations into law.

Mothers and Others expanded its scope and began tackling other environmental dangers. Again, we proceeded on the logic that if some substance or activity has a damaging effect on adults, then it's almost certainly worse for kids. We learned from people like Dr. Philip Landrigan, professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who examined the health hazards of persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, and air pollutants on children. Childhood cancer is up about 25 percent in the last generation. American children are harmed by air pollution, which reduces their respiratory capacity, rendering them more vulnerable to colds and ear infections. In recent years, the incidence of asthma has surged; more than six million children now suffer from it. One in every thirty-three babies born in the United States enters the world with a birth defect. One in six children deals with at least one developmental disorder. Between 3 and 5 percent have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. While these troubling increases can't wholly be attributed to environmental poisons, there are measures we all can take to reduce risk. But we need a reliable guide to help us identify those risks--how to avoid them and what to do to offset their potential impact. This book can be that guide.

Healthy Child Healthy World helps mothers and fathers connect the dots, to understand cause and effect. It came into existence not just to inform the public but to energize it. As a nonprofit organization, Healthy Child's mission is "prevention through education," according to cofounder Nancy Chuda, whose daughter Colette's death at age five, of a nongenetic form of cancer called Wilms' tumor, served as catalyst for the organization's creation.

I met Nancy in the late 1980s when, as a reporter for the TV program The Home Show, she covered some of Mothers and Others' campaign against pesticides. Later, when her daughter got sick, the tragedy spurred Nancy and her husband, Jim, to found Healthy Child, Healthy World (formerly Children's Health Environmental Coalition). She, Jim, and the Healthy Child team were dedicated, as she said, "to preventing the cause so that we don't have children getting so sick" in the first place. "Parents can learn simple things to do in their homes, backyards, schools, and communities to make a really big difference, a difference that could save a life."

Healthy Child Healthy World helps parents focus on what we can do right now as individuals. So much that's out there now is about what you should not do, Healthy Child tries to emphasize the healthful solutions, the positive, easy-to-follow steps you can take for your family, your home, yourself. Of course, the steps we take at home have larger ramifications, because the choices we make every day at the grocery store and the hardware store count. With each purchase we make (and don't make), we're all voting for a more healthful (or safer) environment. It's an extremely effective way we have of demanding safer, better products and practices.

Why is the truth like organic food? Because it's a little harder to find, and a little more expensive than the alternative, but as demand for it grows, the price you have to pay for it comes down. . .

With a book like this, it's getting easier to find.

Visit the Healthy Child, Healthy World for more information and to order the book.