Thank you to all individuals who sent a letter to Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). You efforts and support are sincerely appreciated and continue to be important.
On the surface it seems we have won a small battle, but it may just be smoke and mirrors. As you can read from DESE's email, the subcommittee is not meeting as planned and the chair position has been returned to Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. However; since we don't know who will show up for this next meeting scheduled December 17, 2008 and members not appointed on the subcommittee because of time constraints or alternate interests may not be at the next meeting anyway, this meeting may be no different in imbalance than the planned subcommittee. Also, we still do not have the non-biased experts needed on this committee. What we need are more children's health advocates; those representing asthmatics, developmental disabilities, birth defects, mental illness, indoor air quality specialists, experts on fragrances and other chemicals that have no financial ties, etc. to serve on this committee. We have to keep requesting this!!
To borrow some wording from an October press release from one of the chemical industry group's - Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA), these industry members are pitchmen for their products and for the companies they represent and while we appreciate their transparency and understand why they want to promote the products that are sold by the company's they represent, it's for this very reason, why their findings, conclusions and recommendations need to be treated skeptically by the Department of Education, other committee members, the media and consumers.



The next meeting is scheduled for December 17, 2008. The list of scheduled attendees includes 6 of 22 members who have a relationship in one way or another with the cleaning industry. There are only two non-governmental children's health advocates.

Concerns from Missouri Kids Health Coalition and some members of the Green Cleaning Committee

WE NEED TO MAKE OUR CHILDREN'S HEALTH THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY AND GIVE THIS THE TIME IT DESERVES - THE TIME TO ENSURE OUR CHILDREN'S HEALTH AND THE ABILITY TO REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL!!


For background information and a time line

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