|
Fisher-Price, Mattel & Brookhaven
What do they have
in common? They are poisoning our children with lead! Fisher-Price
and Mattel are importing toys painted with deadly lead from
Communist China to increase profits. Suffolk County Executive Steve
Levy, with the majority blessing of the Suffolk County Legislators,
re-opened the Suffolk County Trap & Skeet Gun Range – a place where lead is measured in tons -
located only 50 feet from a children’s bus stop and 300 feet from
the homes of Yaphank residents. Patrons of Southaven Park as a
whole are also placed at risk. Before opening the gun range, Town of
Brookhaven Supervisor Brian Foley allowed county trucks filled with
soil scraped from the “fall zone” of the range and loaded with lead
(an area where lead pellets fall to the ground after being shot at
an airborne target) to deposit their loads in the town landfill.
This unhealthy decision was based on an old DEC permit for previous
lead removal from elsewhere in Southaven Park, and did not apply to
this most recent lead pollution removal operation.
This “fall zone”
lead was the only lead removed from the range, and it is estimated
that as much as seventy tons of lead still remain embedded in the
surrounding wooded areas within the
Pine Barrens which
are,
and have been,
used as a Sporting Clays course. This lead is impossible to remove
without destroying the vegetation in which it exists which would be
illegal under State Conservation laws. So instead it is left there
to eventually degrade and seep into the vast aquifer which exists
below it threatening to poison Long Island’s drinking water which is
drawn from that aquifer. Lead can enter the body by breathing it in
as a dust or vapor, by ingesting it, and to a lesser extent, by
absorption through the skin. On the shooting range it tends to enter
via all three routes. Every time a firearm is discharged, a spray of
lead erupts into the air around it, while heavier particles
contaminate the ground. The natural, or desirable, level of lead in
human beings is ZERO, so ANY lead ingested or inhaled by humans can
be dangerous.
Fisher-Price &
Mattel, to their credit, issued an immediate recall of
China’s poisoned
toys.
Steve Levy on the
other hand is appeasing the shooting lobby for political gain while
ignoring the safety of our children, the people of Yaphank, the
residents of Brookhaven and
Long Island.
Diane
- Yaphank
|
