I Believe the Children Are Our Lab Rats

Pesticides could make kids dumb, diesel emissions make them sick

You know how we say we shouldn't wreck the planet for "future generations"? Turns out we're wrecking them too! A study from Indiana University says children conceived in the summer score lower on tests in school, and suggests that in-womb pesticide exposure may be to blame. "To recognize that what we put into our environment has potential pandemic effects on pregnancy outcome and possibly on child development is a momentous observation, which hopefully will help transform the way humanity cares for its world," says IU's James Lemons. Meanwhile, states are struggling to clean up school-bus diesel emissions -- linked to asthma and lung cancer -- in the absence of $1 billion in cleanup funds pledged by Congress in 2005. More than 100,000 of the nation's 390,000 diesel school buses don't meet emissions regulations; California approved a $200 million cleanup, while a similar plan in Texas stalled out -- partly because, says the state's appropriations committee chair, "the science is not very good."