Issues > September/October 2005 (#110) > Protecting Your Kids This Fall: Fluoride, Ozone and Mercury

Protecting Your Kids This Fall: Fluoride, Ozone and Mercury

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What you can do

*Check daily air-quality levels at www.epa.gov

*Check your area's ozone "grade" at www.lungaction.org/ reports/stateoftheair2005.html

*Children should limit prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors on days with unhealthy ozone levels.

*See asthma checklists in GG #92 and #56-#57.

Minding Mercury

We know mercury in fish is toxic, but giving up fish means missing out on omega-3 fatty acids that help foster brain development both before birth and during early childhood. Now a new study published this May online in Environmental Health Perspectives of 135 mothers and their babies in eastern Massachusetts has found that the benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks, as long as you choose fish that are low in mercury.

For each additional weekly serving of fish that the mothers ate, their babies' cognitive scores increased by an average of 4 points, or about 7 percent. However, for each increase of 1 ppm of mercury, the babies' scores dropped by 7.5 points, or 12.5 percent.

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