评论
打印
The Toxic Paradox
关于有毒的悖论
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 (自鸣得意) green village of Berkeley, Calif, as being among the worst in the country.
没有什么比致癌危险更能令一个家长担惊受怕的了，特别是一个受教育程度过高、具有生态保护意识的家长。因此，你可以想象得出当《今日美国》日报公布了一项关于学校周围空气质量的调查后所引起的发响。调查显示，被称为“绿色村庄”的加州柏克莱市是全国空气质量最差的地区之一。
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.
该市的公立高中、日托服务中心、幼儿园、小学和初中，都位于空气质量最差的10%的地区之内。我们城镇内的工业污染似乎已经把学生拿来做科学实验，使他们置身于实验室中，每天都呼吸着重金属如锰、铬、镍等有害物质。这是一座要求学校餐厅提供有机食物的城市。
Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus.
我想，有机食物加上有毒校园，真是绝配啊！
Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists (活跃分子) 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月调查报告公布后，市长、街区活跃分子、各种连接父母和老师的协会都加入到确定这一报告是否属实的激烈争论中来了。他们强烈地谴责着城西那家铸钢厂的罪责，议论着工会应该为孩子的健康做些什么，商讨着任何应该采取的措施。
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?
各方提供专家意见，并辅以科学研究加以佐证，但却各执一词，父母又该相信谁呢？是否这里的空气质量真的已造成威胁呢？我们在接送孩子时彼此询问，如果果真如此，这一威胁又有多大呢？与另一种我们似乎永远需面对的健康威胁，如运动场上铅的危害相比，这一威胁又有多严重呢？
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.
这并非另一出引来环保主义者抗议的闹剧，此次事件是对当今父母们在一个日益威胁我们的世界中如何看待危害，如何保护孩子安全（不管是否能够保护他们的安全）的一次检验。它提出了一个问题——在我们的时代中，“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·汤普森是非营利组织“孩子和危险”（Kid Risk）的主席，该组织主要研究孩子健康。金伯莉说：“面对不确定的危险时，我们毫无办法。这也就是说，你的决定很重要，但却也不能确定这些决定是否真有效。”《儿科》杂志2004年的一份报告解释道，相比有毒的化学物质，紧张的父母更担心火灾、交通事故和溺水对孩子造成的危险。
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 (地质断层) for more than 12 years, I still haven't bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.
关于这点，我认为显而易见。但是，这些具体的危险是我们无法控制的，正是这类父母们不能，也或许永远无法预估的事故才有突发的可能。这也就是我为什么将含致癌物质的微波炉食品从橱柜中清除掉，但在这个离地质断层只有数个街区距离的地方住了12年多却还没有用螺栓将书柜与客厅墙壁固定在一起的原因。
