PLATFORM : For Healthy Babies
This year in California, about 17,000 infants will be born with serious birth defects. Families will ask their physicians what they did to cause this tragedy, and we professionals will be at a loss to comfort them.
The California Birth Defects Monitoring Program was established in 1982 to collect data on each infant born with a birth defect and to investigate potential connections with environmental health hazards. All of this is aimed at preventing future birth defects, with their accompanying anguish to families.
Now we learn of proposed cuts up to 40%, which would severely hamper the program. Currently, the program is monitoring exposure to malathion in Los Angeles and metam sodium in Dunsmuir. Who knows where the next toxic accident might occur, let alone the full extent of the danger of toxic dumps right here in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
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