s falls and accidents, these are challenges that have "a clear link between cause and effect" (Partridge, p. 71). On the other hand, pesticide use does not. There are so many factors involved, including the thousands of chemical pesticides on the market, concentration levels of those pesticides, and the ages at which children are exposed to specific pesticides.
             There are no absolutes. Even the few chemicals that have been proven to cause health risks offer no definitive information about the severity of potential damage. It is most difficult to determine risk factors without human experimentation, and that is considered by many people to be unethical. Parents need assistance weeding through all the information available on pesticide dangers in order to determine how to protect their children. In recent years, many federal agencies and legislators, as well as nonprofit groups, have become involved in the issue.
             Actress and mother Meryl Streep and other Connecticut mothers founded Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet in the late 1980s in response to the National Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) report "Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children's Food." The study examined data on the eating habits of American children and the pesticide levels in 27 different food crops, relating this information to rates of cancer and other diseases in children.
             Eight of the pesticides studied were found to be carcinogens. Scientists determined that a child was four times more likely to be exposed to these specific carcinogens as was an adult, because of the child's eating habits and the fact that the tolerance levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were based on someone with the body weight of an average grown man. This would mean that children could potentially be ingesting high enough levels of chemical pesticides to be harmful to their health.
             Because of Mothers & Others and similar consumer organi...