VO: “Burning coal releases mercury into the atmosphere. We ingest this dangerous neurotoxin when we eat fish from polluted waters. More than 45 states now post statewide mercury advisories. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly one in ten women of childbearing age in America carry unsafe levels of mercury in their bodies.”
PREGNANT WOMAN: “Any day now baby, any day.”
VO: “Mercury is passed on to the child… causing damage during a fragile state, while the brain and nervous system are developing in the womb.”
DR. GEORGE LUCIER (Toxicologist): “There’s a consequence of that individual, is they grow, mature, become older have neurological deficits that they never recover from. The child doesn’t do as well in school. The child can’t recognize geometrical patterns as well as the next child, that the child can’t understand that what they’re reading as well as the next child.”
VO: “The largest source of mercury pollution today is coal-fired power plants.”
NAT SOUND: Students in classroom. Coal door closing.
VO: “Children suffer the consequences from our reliance on coal more than adults, because pound for pound, children breath in twice the amount with each breath, while their lungs are still developing.”
DR. CLAY BALLANTINE (Asheville, NC): "We have numerous studies that show that everything from increased asthma rates, increased lung infections rates, increased ear infections in the very young, all tied to air pollution exposure. And we now know we are also impairing lung development in children if they grow up in more polluted air. Electricity use is one of the root causes for air pollution. The more that we waste and the more that we do inefficiently with the way we generate our power then the more particulate pollution and ozone pollution we have and hence the more death and disease we see including what happens with the asthma burden that our children have to deal with.”
CHILD 1: My name is Pherius. I’m 11 years old and I have asthma.
CHILD 2: I- my name is Sarah Holland and I'm 10 years old and I have asthma.
CHILD 3: My name is Andrew and I am 9 years old and I have asthma.
BALLANTINE: We’re seeing a huge burden of disease is being placed on our children unlike any generation has had to deal with before.
NAT SOUND (Andrew): "These are some of the drugs I take to try to help me."
MUSIC