評論
打印
The Toxic Paradox
關于有毒的悖論
There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA Today investigation of air quality around the nation's schools singled out those in the smugly (自鳴得意) green village of Berkeley, Calif, as being among the worst in the country.
沒有什么比致癌危險更能令一個家長擔驚受怕的了，特別是一個受教育程度過高、具有生態保護意識的家長。因此，你可以想象得出當《今日美國》日報公布了一項關于學校周圍空氣質量的調查后所引起的發響。調查顯示，被稱為“綠色村莊”的加州柏克萊市是全國空氣質量最差的地區之一。
The city's public high school, as well as a number of daycare centers, preschools, elementary and middle schools, fell in the lowest 10%. Industrial pollution in our town had supposedly turned students into living science experiments breathing in a laboratory's worth of heavy metals like manganese, chromium and nickel each day. This is a city that requires school cafeterias to serve organic meals.
該市的公立高中、日托服務中心、幼兒園、小學和初中，都位于空氣質量最差的10%的地區之內。我們城鎮內的工業污染似乎已經把學生拿來做科學實驗，使他們置身于實驗室中，每天都呼吸著重金屬如錳、鉻、鎳等有害物質。這是一座要求學校餐廳提供有機食物的城市。
Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus.
我想，有機食物加上有毒校園，真是絕配??！
Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists (活躍分子) and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a fierce battle over its validity: over the guilt of the steel-casting factory on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children's health and over what, if anything, ought to be done.
自12月調查報告公布后，市長、街區活躍分子、各種連接父母和老師的協會都加入到確定這一報告是否屬實的激烈爭論中來了。他們強烈地譴責著城西那家鑄鋼廠的罪責，議論著工會應該為孩子的健康做些什么，商討著任何應該采取的措施。
With all sides presenting their own experts armed with conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly perpetual health scares we confront, like panic over lead in syntheic athletic fields?
各方提供專家意見，并輔以科學研究加以佐證，但卻各執一詞，父母又該相信誰呢？是否這里的空氣質量真的已造成威脅呢？我們在接送孩子時彼此詢問，如果果真如此，這一威脅又有多大呢？與另一種我們似乎永遠需面對的健康威脅，如運動場上鉛的危害相比，這一威脅又有多嚴重呢？
Rather than just another weird episode iin the town that brought you protesting environmentalists, this latest drama is a trial for how today's parents perceive risk, how we try to keep our kids safe-whether it's possible to keep them safe-in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, "safe" could even mean.
這并非另一出引來環保主義者抗議的鬧劇，此次事件是對當今父母們在一個日益威脅我們的世界中如何看待危害，如何保護孩子安全（不管是否能夠保護他們的安全）的一次檢驗。它提出了一個問題——在我們的時代中，“安全”到底是指什么？
"There's no way around the uncertainty," says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children's health. "That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren't going to know if they do." A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that nervous parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure.
金伯莉·湯普森是非營利組織“孩子和危險”（Kid Risk）的主席，該組織主要研究孩子健康。金伯莉說：“面對不確定的危險時，我們毫無辦法。這也就是說，你的決定很重要，但卻也不能確定這些決定是否真有效。”《兒科》雜志2004年的一份報告解釋道，相比有毒的化學物質，緊張的父母更擔心火災、交通事故和溺水對孩子造成的危險。
To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It's the dangers parents can't-and may never-quantify that occur all of a sudden. That's why I've rid my cupboard of microwave food packed in bags coated with a potential cancer-causing substance, but although I've lived blocks from a major fault line (地質斷層) for more than 12 years, I still haven't bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.
關于這點，我認為顯而易見。但是，這些具體的危險是我們無法控制的，正是這類父母們不能，也或許永遠無法預估的事故才有突發的可能。這也就是我為什么將含致癌物質的微波爐食品從櫥柜中清除掉，但在這個離地質斷層只有數個街區距離的地方住了12年多卻還沒有用螺栓將書柜與客廳墻壁固定在一起的原因。
