Free | 23/6
Posted: 6/1/2012
The sun is shining here in Oakland, and you can feel summer in the air. In my neighborhood, and all across America, kids are anxiously awaiting the final ring of the school bell. But not every child is looking forward to summer. Some will be trapped indoors during the next few months, unable to play outside because of their asthma attacks. Like many kids, I had asthma growing up so I know how hard it is to be stuck inside while everyone else plays.Too many kids in our country suffer from asthma. It's the number one chronic childhood disease in our country, and the leading cause of missed school days. It's also one of the top reasons children end up in the hospital. And in many cases this illness and others like it could be avoided by having cleaner air and water that's free of pollutants and toxins.But this disease doesn't reach everyone; in fact people of color are hit the hardest. More than half of all African Americans live in neighborhoods where the air quality doesn't meet federal standards. And one in six African American kids has asthma, compared with one in ten nationwide. That's a rate that should be unacceptable in any nation as wealthy and technologically advanced as ours.The saddest part is that these kids don't have to suffer. We could prevent 130,000 asthma attacks just by cleaning up one of the dirtiest sources of pollution: coal-fired power plants. But it's not just asthma we have to worry about. Coal plants fill our air with chemicals that lead to heart disease, cancer, birth defects, and early death.The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to keep us safe from these chemicals; late last year, they issued long-overdue Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to clean up the worst pollution from coal plants, including toxic mercury.Coal plants pump about 48 tons of mercury into our air each year. To put things in perspective, just one-seventieth of a teaspoon of mercury is enough to contaminate an entire lake, mak