Activism Alert - May 2004

• Stop Child Explotation On The Internet [1]
• Tell the US Chamber Of Commerce To Keep Commercialization Out Of Our Schools [2]
• EPA Plans to Reduce Air Pollution Controls [3]

Stop Child Exploitation On The Internet

Prepare yourself before going to this link: http://www.childsupermodels.com [4]. What you will see is NOT illegal; it just should be.

Webe Web is a Florida based company that portrays itself as a child modeling website. They sell photos and videos of scantily clad young girls in provocative poses to anyone with access to the Internet and a credit card.

Urge your congressional leaders to support legislation introduced by Representative Mark Foley (R-FL 16th) and Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY).

To send a message, please visit the link below: http://dads.e-actionmax.com/showalert.asp?aaid=695 [5]

Tell the US Chamber Of Commerce To Keep Commercialization Out Of Our Schools

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce held a conference on "Business & K-12 Education Partnerships." They are advocating for increased commercialization of schools, marketing to schoolchildren, and the use of schools as public relations props.

What you can do to help
Click HERE [6] to send emails asking your members of Congress to introduce legislation to prohibit corporations from using the schools to bypass parents and pitch their products to impressionable schoolchildren.

Background Read the Commercial Alert news release about the US Chamber of Commerce conference HERE [7]

Get more information about the conference itself HERE [8]

Read a good WHO report on marketing to children
The World Health Organization has just released a useful report, titled: "Marketing Food to Children: the Global Regulatory Environment." The author, Dr. Corinna Hawkes, has done an excellent job in detailing many innovative and interesting ways that countries limit marketing to children. The report is available at: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2004/9241591579.pdf [9]

About Commercial Alert
Commercial Alert is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. For more information, go to www.commercialalert.org [10]

EPA Plans to Reduce Air Pollution Controls

Have Your Voice Heard

The government agency that looks out for food safety urges that we limit how much fish we eat because of mercury contamination. Meanwhile, another agency responsible for preventing mercury from getting into the fish (and the rest of the environment) proposes relaxing controls on releases of the poison.

Mercury is known to damage the brains of children growing in the womb. This heavy metal comes out of smokestacks at coal-fired plants, falling back to earth and poisoning its creatures. Like other toxic materials that don't break down, mercury concentrates up the food chain. Because high levels of mercury are now found in many fish, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning this month advising pregnant women and children to stay away from swordfish and to limit the amount of "chunk white" canned tuna they eat to no more than six ounces per week.

Yet just as the FDA urges people to eat less otherwise-healthy food, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposes delaying the regulation of mercury in coal-plant emissions - the largest source of mercury contamination, but the only one unregulated by our government.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set limits on power-plant pollution such as mercury, taking into account what can be done using current technology. The EPA said it could require a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2008 using current technology. But instead, the Bush administration proposed dragging out the process until 2018, and even then cleaning up only 70% of mercury emissions.

To weaken the current standards, the EPA will have to change its own rules. This is where you come in. The EPA is required to accept public comments on this proposed rule change. Spearjeaded by TrueMajority , groups including the Environmental Working Group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Council of Churches, the Mercury Policy Project, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Health Care Without Harm , are mobilizing to oppose these changes. Join them.

source: www.truemajority.com [11]