Can Public School Meals Be Safer?

One area for potential bipartisan political progress is improving the healthfulness of school lunches that feed 30 million US children each school day. As with many complex challenges, the Safe School Meals Act coming before Congress this year faces many regulatory and scientific hurdles.

Not-Happy Meals

American schoolchildren are being exposed to pesticides, artificial flavorings, and numerous “forever chemicals” in their food supplies. Congress is looking to see if a consensus can be reached toward improving American children’s meals via the Safe School Meals Act. If Americans cannot forge common ground on improving school lunches, what hope is there for cleaning up other pollution?

A number of health and parent groups have joined together to advance the legislation.

Scientists have determined that many toxic chemicals endure in the environment (and accumulate in children’s bodies) forever. The Environmental Protection Agency has identified more than 12,00 harmful chemicals that exist in water and food supplies. Plasticizers used in packaging called phthalates are found in pizza boxes, plastic food wraps, and gloves used to prepare meals in school cafeterias.

One media outlet collected samples of common favorites like breadsticks, fruit, pizza, and potatoes from schools in Maryland, DC, and Virginia to be independently lab tested. More than 50 pesticides were detected in the samples, often combined in a single meal. Even more, cadmium was detected at a level 12 times higher than the legal limit for bottled water, arsenic was found in rice at six times the level permitted in apple juice, and lead (for which there is no recognized “safe” level) was present in all the meals.

Most of these chemicals have now been linked to human harms, to which children are most vulnerable, including cancers, neurological damage and brain development.

What It Asks

The Safe School Meals Act would ask the EPA to ensure that pesticide residues in school meals would be eliminated within five years. It directs that within two years, the FDA “establish for each heavy metal… a maximum permissible level found in or on final school meal products that poses a reasonable certainty of no harm to school-age children from” exposure. Additionally, the Act seeks to determine what additional agricultural costs are required to provide clean meals for schoolchildren.

Cleaning up children’s food supplies is complex and challenging, but the Safe School Meals Act seems to cover the bases without harming farmers economically.

1. Scientists have determined that many toxic chemicals endure in the environment (and accumulate in children’s bodies) forever.
2. The Safe School Meals Act would ask the EPA to ensure that pesticide residues in school meals would be eliminated within five years.
3. American schoolchildren are being exposed to pesticides, artificial flavorings, and numerous “forever chemicals” in their food supplies.