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Erin Brokovich-Ellis issues the keynote speech at UCLA’s environmental health summit Thursd

The first UCLA environmental health summit, held Thursday by the UCLA Institute of the Environment and the Women’s Foundation of California, focused on the disproportionate effects of pollution on women and children in a gender-based take on environmental issues.

Progress and challenges for issues such as community building, policy change, medical improvements, cosmetics and transportation were addressed by the five female panelists.

Panelists stressed the need to build a strong community, exercise one’s voice toward local officials, and the need to decrease the use of cars.

They cited progress on some of these issues, such as new Kaiser Permanente medical buildings being built from environmentally friendly materials and increases in public transportation. But people need to push for policy change if they wish to make serious progress, panelists said.

“Science alone is not enough; we need pressure,” said Rosaline Chan, legislative aide to state Assembly member Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park.

Tina Eshaghpour, program director of the Women’s Foundation of California, said women are key in facing environmental issues. Mothers make two-thirds of all family healthcare decisions, she said.

There are currently over 85,000 chemicals that have never been tested and yet are widely in use, Eshaghpour said.

Women, on average, have 2 to 10 percent more body fat than men, and have a different hormonal makeup, which makes women more susceptible to storing toxins in their bodies, according to a Women’s Foundation report.

Children are also vulnerable because they can attain these stored toxins through breast-feeding.

The result of these factors is that women and children are disproportionately affected by toxins in the environment in comparison to adult males, and effects are seen in many areas around Los Angeles.

“The inland valley region ranks as the fourth most polluted area in the world. Children born there will be exposed to as many toxins in the first 12 days of their lives as the rest of us in 70 years,” said Michele Prichard, director of special projects for Liberty Hill Foundation.

According to a study by the St. John’s Well Child Clinic, 54 percent of children under six years of age living in the Figueroa Corridor have lead concentrations in their blood above the level shown to cause disabilities.

Keynote speaker Erin Brockovich-Ellis, who was portrayed in the 2000 film by Julia Roberts, issued a call to action on environmental issues, asking people to care and be informed. A medical degree is not needed to know that something in the environment is causing illness, she said.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off,” said Brockovich-Ellis, director of environmental research at law firm Masry and Vittotoe.

As for solutions to environmental problems, the overall recommendations of the panel included the promotion of smart growth, the improvement of research and data collection, holding polluters accountable, and promotion of the “do no harm” campaign, where a product must be proven to be safe before entering the public market.

Attendees said it was interesting to view environmental problems from a new perspective.

“I never really thought about the environment in terms of gender,” said Dutta Hailemariam, a third-year history and international development studies student.

“These are inspiring professional women making a better world in their own arenas,” she said.