Like any election season, there was no shortage of public opinion polls related to the 2006 general election that swept Democrats back into power in both houses of Congress and a majority of the nation’s governors.

On everything from views on specific candidates to statewide and local ballot measures to the war on terror around the world, the views of voters were measured like hospital patients having their temperature taken, every hour, on the hour.

Public opinion may be as much a practice as a science, and yet it seems reasonable to assert that more often than not, public opinion polls contain at least a kernel of truth, if not a whole lot more.

But with all of that research and even validation from election victories, some community leaders are increasingly voicing an opinion that may be impossible to discern from scientific polls: That our politicians and policymakers are missing a key fact that affects a vital constituency.

A leading example is one you most likely have not heard much about: Environmental policies that popular at first blush, and that purport to help enhance our health may actually affect it for the worse. And those same leaders are warning that the nation’s very food supply could be endangered.

Recently, in New Delhi, India, a little-known working group of the United Nations that oversee the “Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer” met to consider the best ways to reduce the remaining sources of CFC’s and other chemicals that some scientists claim destroys the Earth’s life-protecting ozone shield.

Who could argue with that? Well, many who say they are friends of the environment claim that the U.N. committee’s work is becoming counterproductive and that their rationale for continuing is way out there in the blue.

An increasing concern in many minority communities is the rather new and novel issue of “environmental justice” – the considered opinion that environmental impacts disproportionately fall upon minority and urban populations.

This is especially proven true in Africa, as evidenced by the disaster that the ban on the pesticide DDT. The pesticide may not be around as a toxic threat, but the deadly disease malaria – which DDT kills – has sprung up as a result of its absence. It’s all fine and good to try to eliminate the use of toxic substances, they say, but at what cost?

Niger Innis, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, and others have condemned the anti-DDT policies as reckless medical malpractice -- and eco-manslaughter. They are not alone.

The New York Times wrote in a December, 2002 editorial, that richer nations have been “unconscionably stingy in financing the fight against malaria or research into alternatives to DDT. Until one is found, wealthy nations should be helping poor countries with all available means – including DDT.” Continued...