98 The Real Danger Parents Should Worry About

名称：98 The Real Danger Parents Should Worry About
内容简介：
晨读英语美文 真题阅读
[00:04.56]There is nothing like the suggestion
[00:06.88]of a cancer risk to scare a parent,
[00:08.75]especially one of the over-educated,
[00:11.48]ecoconscious type.
[00:13.65]So you can imagine the reaction
[00:15.90]when a recent USA Today investigation
[00:18.24]of air quality
[00:19.40]around the nation's schools
[00:20.92]singled out those in the smugly
[00:23.37]green village of Berkeley, Calif.,
[00:25.79]as being among the worst in the country.
[00:27.83]The city's public high school,
[00:30.30]as well as a number of daycare centers,
[00:32.64]preschools, elementary and middle schools,
[00:35.98]fell in the lowest 10%.
[00:37.49]Industrial pollution in our town
[00:40.72]had supposedly turned students
[00:43.05]into living science experiments
[00:45.14]breathing in a laboratory's worth
[00:47.23]of heavy metals like manganese,
[00:48.92]chromium and nickel each day.
[00:51.15]This in a city
[00:53.13]that requires school cafeterias
[00:54.88]to serve organic meals.
[00:57.23]Great, I thought, organic lunch,
[00:58.96]toxic campus.
[01:01.40]Since December,
[01:02.48]when the report came out,
[01:03.93]the mayor, neighborhood activists
[01:06.02]and various parent-teacher associations
[01:08.36]have engaged in a fierce battle
[01:11.12]over its validity:
[01:12.59]over the guilt
[01:13.81]of the steel-casting factory
[01:15.31]on the western edge of town,
[01:16.73]over union jobs versus children's health
[01:19.20]and over what,
[01:20.70]if anything, ought to be done.
[01:22.51]With all sides presenting
[01:24.54]their own experts
[01:25.99]armed with conflicting scientific studies,
[01:27.84]whom should parents believe?
[01:29.73]Is there truly a threat here,
[01:32.58]we asked one another
[01:34.17]as we dropped off our kids,
[01:35.53]and if so, how great is it?
[01:37.78]And how does it compare with the other,
[01:40.19]seemingly perpetual health scares
[01:42.37]we confront,
[01:43.47]like panic over lead
[01:45.03]in synthetic athletic fields?
[01:46.59]Rather than just another weird episode
[01:49.36]in the town that brought you
[01:51.06]protesting environmentalists,
[01:52.91]this latest drama is a trial
[01:54.92]for how today's parents perceive risk,
[01:57.01]how we try to keep our kids safe—
[01:58.90]whether it's possible to keep them safe—
[02:02.06]in what feels like an increasingly
[02:05.04]threatening world.
[02:06.43]It raises the question of what,
[02:08.38]in our time,
[02:09.28]“safe” could even mean.
[02:11.56]“There's no way
[02:12.83]around the uncertainty,”
[02:14.18]says Kimberly Thompson,
[02:15.86]president of Kid Risk,
[02:17.16]a nonprofit group
[02:18.45]that studies children's health.
[02:19.95]“That means your choices can matter,
[02:21.95]but it also means you aren't
[02:23.97]going to know if they do.”
[02:25.28]A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics
[02:29.39]explained that nervous parents
[02:31.93]have more to fear from fire,
[02:33.52]car accidents and drowning
[02:36.01]than from toxic chemical exposure.
[02:37.72]To which I say:
[02:39.55]Well, obviously.
[02:41.51]But such concrete hazards
[02:43.27]are beside the point.
[02:44.66]It's the dangers parents can't—
[02:46.52]and may never—
[02:47.65]quantify that occur all of sudden.
[02:49.31]That's why I've rid my cupboard
[02:51.79]of microwave food packed in bags coated
[02:53.89]with a potential cancer-causing substance,
[02:56.40]but although I've lived blocks
[02:58.55]from a major fault line
[02:59.87]for more than 12 years,
[03:01.13]I still haven't bolted our bookcases
[03:03.27]to the living room wall.