Political Quotes

“I am very pleased to rise to urge support of passage of S. 729, the Lead Exposure Reduction Act. I am an original cosponsor of this legislation and have been working with Senator Reid for 5 years on this issue. I would like to congratulate Senator Reid on his extraordinary dedication and commitment to this legislation and thank him for his kind remarks about my work on the bill. The same lead poisoning that some say hastened the fall of the Roman Empire is still with us today nearly fifteen hundred years later and it is still causing brain damage and death. Doctors, scientists, and health officials all agree that lead is dangerous, that it can severely harm, or kill us. While human exposure to lead has been dramatically reduced due to the ban of its use in most paints and the majority of the Nation's gasoline, it is still the case that as many as 4 million children have blood lead levels known to be toxic and at least 1 in 9 children have been affected by lead. In my State of Connecticut a 1992 study in the city of Stamford indicated that 1 in 5 children, or 20 percent of the population of children, had dangerously high lead blood levels. More recently, the Environmental Defense Fund has estimated that there are 80,000 children under the age of 6 in Connecticut that are at risk of lead poisoning.”