If You Love Our Children
Alive Nov. 2003
by Helke Ferrie

When passion, reason and incontrovertible scientific fact unite on a project the result is sure to be a masterpiece inspiring faith that moves mountains. The Women’s Healthy Environments Network (WHEN) is working on the production of a documentary on how the environment affects children’s health. Entitled “If You Love Our Children” this film is as devastating as it is encouraging and as timely as it is necessary. WHEN’s earlier documentary, “Exposure: Environmental Links to Breast Cancer”, is now available worldwide in seven languages. Nominated for a gemini, it won Best Health Documentary at the International Independent Film Festival in 2001. Canadian Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, recipient of the Governor General’s and the United Nations Environmental Program awards is the Producer and Barri Cohen whose award-winning documentaries are widely broadcast is the director.

The film begins with 17-year old Jean-Dominique Levesque-Rene who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 11, he believes from the pesticides used around his home area, Ile Bizard, Quebec. About 50% of the area is golf courses, which require 8 times more pesticides than farming does. Disregarding determinedly the powerful pesticide lobby, this kid raised hell starting with his local town council and succeeded in gathering support such that Quebec, this year, became the first province to pass legislation outlawing the cosmetic use of pesticides. “My battle will never end,” he promised the dying children in his hospital’s cancer ward and, addressing the camera states simply, “I must save the children. I must save the world.”

The last time we were inspired so powerfully was when Terry Fox jogged across Canada and taught us that cancer is primarily a disease of the young. Then we did not know the reason. Two years ago a consensus opinion was published by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, stating that pesticides and other environmental toxins all avoidable, cause at least one third of all cancers and neurological disorders in children.

On film some of the world’s most respected medical experts tell us about their research and determination to stop this “vast and terrible experiment on our children” who encounter these carcinogens and neurotoxins daily without their knowledge and consent. Cornell University’s ecologist Sandra Steingraber, a US government advisor on child health, calls this “toxic trespass” which begins in the mother’s womb: the amniotic fluid is already carrying carcinogens, then a “mother’s pesticide-contaminated breasts serve as the vehicle for poisoning her baby’s developing brain”, and the growing child continues to eat, drink, breathe and absorb through the skin unnecessary and avoidable environmental toxins and hormone disruptors.

Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mt. Sinai School Medicine and his team served both the US and Canadian governments as scientific advisors for the reform of both countries’ pesticide legislation. His research showed that the cost to the healthcare system of known environmentally-caused childhood cancers, asthma and neurological disorders is in the range of over a hundred billion US dollars annually (Environmental Health Perspectives vol. 1101, July 2002). On camera he denounces the defeatist attitude that alleges, “Everything causes cancer, so there’s nothing we can do anyhow.” “That is absolutely false!” he asserts. “We have the information that allows us to prevent all this, but there are powerful forces in the industry that want governments to believe that while human health is a good thing, we need to be ‘rational’ and balance the needs of industry against human health.” At that point any viewer’s blood is likely to boil.

The film showcases the courageous work of several Canadian pediatricians and international activists for child health. Powerful encouragement comes from renowned epidemiologist Devra Lee Davis, formerly of the World Resources Institute and now at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Precautionary policies are the immediate solution, she asserts because “we cannot fix a child whose fetal brain was destroyed by lead and pesticides”. Despair over the enormity of the task we face she dispels by reminding of the wise council in the Talmud: “It is not for you to complete the task, you are merely required to begin it.”

This film will be aired by mainstream media networks and shown at special events hosted by children’s health organizations, health professionals, the education system, labor unions, politicians and environmental and community groups. That’s where you and I become part of this truth-telling effort. Upon its release, I know I will be on the phone to my mayor, MP and MPP and organize a public viewing in my area. I will bug, cajole and gently browbeat into attendance local school principals and teachers, the parents of my grandchildren’s playmates, town councilors, local doctors and nurses, get the editors of our local papers to publish a piece on the event, and employ the modern equivalent of roof-top shouting: e-mail. This documentary gives us the chance to stop this silent, invisible, creeping murder of our children. Rene Dubois’ famous words apply: “Act locally and think globally.” If we don’t protect our children, what will there be left to protect?

Potentionally, partially supported by the National Film Board, money is still needed to complete this documentary. WHEN is a registered charity (No. 11926 2533 RR0001) and invites your support. For information, availability of this and other WHEN documentaries contact or visit . Call 416-928-0880 or email when@web.ca.