Bay Area Kids Battle Pollution
by Mandy Billinge(Estuary Action Challenge))

The health of the San Francisco Bay is declining due to pollution from many sources: effluent discharged from factories and refineries; pesticide runoff from farms and gardens; dumping of oil, paint, toxic cleaning fluids and other items into stormdrains.

As a result, the bay's fish and shellfish are contaminated with a wide range of toxic pollutants including methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins and pesticides.

Consumption of these pollutants increases the risk of neurotoxicity and cancer in humans, especially in children. More than 70 percent of the people fishing and eating food from the bay are people of color. For many of these anglers, English is a second language and posted warnings about the safety of bay fish, already limited in scope, are often not easily understood.

Each year, more than 200 students participate in a "Pollution Reduction/Safe Bay Food Consumption Program" sponsored by Estuary Action Challenge (EAC). Student participants are more than 90 percent children of color, whose families eat fish from the San Francisco Bay.

Utilizing a hands-on curriculum and our unique teacher-training model, in which teachers learn alongside their students, EAC works to reduce pollution to the bay, while informing those most at risk about the hazards of bay-caught foods. EAC also provides anglers with simple safety precautions that can reduce the risks from eating contaminated bay fish.

EAC's teaching tools include games about bioaccumulation of pollutants in the food chain and informational flyers in seven different languages. EAC also hosts safe fish-cooking demonstrations for their families.

Students take responsibility to teach their communities what they have learned, translating their lessons into the languages of their communities. The students have created T-shirts, books, plays, slide shows and posters to communicate their anti-pollution messages.

Under EAC's guidance, students create informational flyers to distribute along the waterfront. The students also interview people they find fishing on local piers about safe fishing and cooking practices. Anglers have responded with interest to the youngsters.

EAC students form clean-up clubs with neighborhood residents and invite students from other schools to help clear away the debris that collects around stormdrains that carry rainwater to the bay.

Through their own research, students have discovered that oil factories and refineries that ring the bay are most often located in the neighborhoods of low-income people and people of color, who have fewer resources available to fight for clean air and clean water.

Students have gone on to interview politicians and perform plays to express their views on this environmental justice issue. Some have even been moved to write letters to the chief executive officers of some of the polluting companies.

Shannon Williams, an 11-year-old fifth-grade student from Thousand Oaks School in Berkeley, wrote this letter as one of her EAC action projects:

Dear State Legislature,

I was wondering if you could propose a bill about environmental justice because there are schools, homes, cities, even towns next to factories and powerplants.

The toxic chemicals can kill and cause brain damage. Some kids can't read or write - not because they're dumb, but because of pollution. The powerplants are by home areas of people of color. That's not fair. Because we are people of color, our lives aren't worth anything to some other people.

People with cancer or asthma can die. Factories should be made to stop polluting and people should not have to live near them. Please help us, we're just kids but we want to make a difference.

Please write back,

Shannon Williams.

Estuary Action Challenge, a project of Earth Island Institute, can be reached directly c/o Mandi Billinge, 1528 Ashby Ave., Berkeley, CA 94703.