Children

And the Razzie goes to Norman Lear's EMA for Exposing Kids to Sewage Sludge and Not Coming Clean

by Jill Richardson — May 9, 2011 - 3:00pm

For a non-actress surrounded by movie stars, Debbie Levin, President of the Environmental Media Association (EMA) -- an organization founded by Norman Lear -- is putting on quite a performance of her own. Too bad it's more likely to win her a fraud charge than an Oscar, based on her May 6, 2011 letter to her Board provided to the Food Rights Network by a source inside EMA.

Over the past month, Levin has been confronted with ample evidence that the group she runs exposed school children (not to mention the Hollywood celebrities that serve on the group's board) to toxic sewage sludge. In 2009, EMA began a partnership with several Los Angeles schools, securing the donation of thousands of dollars in compost and soil amendment products from Kellogg Garden Products for the schools' organic gardens soon thereafter. In a sworn affidavit, former L.A. Unified School District garden advisor, Mud Baron, said that he informed Levin early on and repeatedly that Kellogg uses sewage sludge in many of its products, and sewage sludge is illegal for use in organic gardens.

Guest Contributor

Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

by PRW Staff — February 7, 2011 - 3:47pm

Topics: Children, Corporations, Education

The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy -- where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision -- investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

Hell Freezes Over: Philip Morris Settles a Wrongful Death Suit

by Anne Landman — December 14, 2010 - 12:52pm

Topics: Children, Health, Tobacco

Philip Morris (PM) broke from its longstanding policy of never settling a personal injury case recently after it quietly paid $5 million to settle a wrongful death suit brought against its subsidiary, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco (USST), maker of Copenhagen and Skoal brands of spit tobacco. PM's parent company, Altria Group, acquired USST in 2009.

Kelly June Hill sued USST on behalf of her son, Bobby Hill, who died of oral cancer in 2003 at age 42. Bobby got addicted to spit tobacco as a child, long before health warning labels were put on the product in 1987. In the course of the case, USST dumped a half million pages of documents on the plaintiffs lawyers, which, by Hill's attorneys' own account, made searching for helpful material quite interesting.

Don't Even Mention Global Warming to Kids

by Anne Landman — May 27, 2010 - 12:43pm

Colorado State School Board Member Marcia Neal (R-Grand Junction) supports eliminating teaching of global warming in schools.A new group called "Balanced Education for Everyone"(BEE) is rolling out a national effort to stop the teaching of global warming in schools, calling it "unnecessary." The group says global war

Main Source:

Denver Post (Technology Section), May 25, 2010

Procter & Gamble Blames Parents, Social Media for "Chemical Burn" Allegations

by Anne Landman — May 17, 2010 - 3:42pm

When parents of toddlers started complaining that Procter & Gamble's new "Dry Max" Pampers were giving their kids severe diaper rash, Jodi Allen, P&G's Vice President for Pampers took prompt action -- and blamed the childrens' parents and social media for spreading false rumors about their products.

Main Source:

ConsumerAffairs.com, May 7, 2010

Send out the Clown

by Anne Landman — April 29, 2010 - 3:26pm

Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a group that works to end irresponsible corporate behavior, is pressuring the [[McDonald's
|McDonalds]] fast food chain to retire their promotional clown, Ronald McDonald, saying the clown is a threat to public health.

Main Source:

Corporate Accountability International, April 29, 2010

Waiter, There Is Toxic Sludge in my Organic Soup!

by John Stauber — March 16, 2010 - 1:03pm

Topics: Food Safety, Agriculture, Sludge, Children

(NOTE: Visit the SourceWatch Portal on Toxic Sludge)

Fifteen years ago, the Center for Media and Democracy in my book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You first exposed the deceptive PR campaign by the municipal sewage industry that has renamed toxic sewage sludge as "biosolids" to be spread on farms and gardens. Unfortunately, the scam continues to fool more people than ever, even in San Francisco which is often dubbed the country's greenest city.

I suspect that Bay area celebrity chef Alice Waters would never dump sewage sludge onto her own organic garden, nor serve food grown in sludge in her world famous natural foods restaurant Chez Panisse. The mission of her Chez Panisse Foundation is to create "edible schoolyards" where kids grow, prepare, and eat food from their own organic gardens. But Francesca Vietor, the new executive director of the Chez Panisse Foundation, is at the same time actively promoting dumping toxic sludge on gardens in her role as Vice President of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

Disney's Iron-Fisted Marketing to Kids

by Anne Landman — March 12, 2010 - 3:28pm

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is a small advocacy group that last fall successfully got the Disney Company to offer full refunds to people who had purchased the company's "Baby Einstein" videos, which were supposed to make ver

Main Source:

New York Times, March 9, 2010

FDA Backpedals on Safety of BPA

by Anne Landman — January 18, 2010 - 1:39pm

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is backing off its much-criticized position defending the safety of a ubiquitous chemical ingredient in plastics called Bisphenol-A (BPA).

Main Source:

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, January 15, 2010

A PR Campaign to Make BPA Plastic Fantastic

by Diane Farsetta — June 3, 2009 - 2:50pm

On May 28, industry executives met "to devise a public relations and lobbying strategy to block government bans" of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in cans and plastic containers.

Main Source:

Washington Post, May 31, 2009