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.”

Recently, the host of the ABC program 20/20 John Stossel said, “Because of America's hysteria about chemicals, much of the world won't use DDT. And by the time this TV show is over, malaria will have killed another hundred children.”

Even the co-founder of the global environmental group Greenpeace is on the record as well: “The environmental movement has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity.”

An old saying goes, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” and some are saying that bad history is repeating itself in the form of similar efforts by U.N. bureaucrats to ban Methyl Bromide (MB), described this way by Dr. Henry Miller, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Biotechnology: “an important pesticide used to control harmful insects, rodents, pathogens and weeds. Used by a large cross-section of the world's agriculture producers, it is an essential tool for pest control. (If you have ever eaten a commercially-grown strawberry from California, chances are you have methyl bromide to thank.)”

Bill Whalen, a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution sees the issue also in terms of the United Nations habitual hostility to the United States. “And that, in turn, raises the question of which matters more to the UN: the pursuit of political correctness, or America's well-being? One problem with phasing out methyl bromide is there's no reliable fallback for farmers and growers (the U.S. Department of Agriculture has devoted more than $120 million to finding a replacement, with no luck). That's not a reasonable risk either for growers or consumers.”

“Meanwhile, there's economic collateral damage – primarily, the large growing states of California and Florida. The USDA's Agricultural Pesticide Impact Assessment Program estimates that a phase-out for pre-plant soil fumigation would cause $1.5 billion in annual lost production in the U.S – and that doesn't take into account lost jobs and the difficulties in easing other nations' quarantined products into the U.S. market.”

Whalen’s warning may soon be full-blown crisis, with recent reports from Florida and Mississippi indicating possible critical shortages of the product right now that would totally devastate affected crops.

Yes, we are concerned about the health of our environment. But we are even more concerned about the lives of our fellow citizens. Perhaps the new political environment will allow for a more considered approach to understanding that in the name of achieving good, we may continue to hurt people all over the world. Shame on those who are won’t even consider the idea of reforming flawed U.N. guidelines.