Greening Our Children 10th Anniversary a WOW

To say I am immensely proud that the May 9th Greening Our Children luncheon, the fundraiser I co-founded ten years ago, was a huge success would be an understatement.  Sure, it was fun to reconnect with the founder and CEO of The Honest Company, who were honored for their extraordinary efforts to supply the world with nontoxic baby, beauty and cleaning products.  And yes, I was rather giddy talking with James Redford, an award winning environmental documentary film maker and our Champion for Children award recipient.  (He also has a very famous dad and looks quite like him!)

But what I’m really most excited about is that the audience met a group of brilliant scientists who are feverishly working to ensure our future kids and grandkids will not have to struggle with learning disabilities, autism, cancer or asthma.  Drs. Bob and Rosalind Wright, the Deputy Co-Directors of the Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center in New York, took center stage as a moderator asked them questions that helped reveal why it’s not enough to study one toxic chemical at a time.  Nor are chemicals the only influence on our bodies’ health.  I think we’ve heard that each of us has over 200 chemicals in our body.  Up until recently, no scientist has had the capability to identify how those chemicals interact with each other.  The other missing piece of the equation is that nutrition and stress can influence health, in good and not so good ways.

I heard an audible sigh of relief from the audience when Dr. Rosalind Wright explained that a loving and nurturing home can overcome some of the negative side effects from toxic chemicals.  Our well heeled audience surely took comfort in that fact given the plastics we all let our kids drink from and chew on back when.  What’s not so clear is how two kids with a single mom who is in-between jobs, worries about being evicted and can’t always put three meals on the table, will grown up health wise.  The gratitude I feel knowing Drs. Wright and team are striving to identify the causes of these typically exasperating and sometimes crushing diseases is all the medicine I need right now to continue supporting their research.