Airports Wise Up

Layover. Doesn’t each horrid syllable cause a deep shudder to run through your body?
Some airport planners must have actually endured layovers with children themselves. Scattered across the country are airports with kid-friendly attractions within their walls. Cheapflights.com has produced “Kids Airport Diversion Guide,” a downloadable four-page listing of notable airports.
For example, the Dallas/Fort Worth airport has three Junior Flyer Clubs offering play space, and it “also boasts one of the most bewitching airport rides in the country—Skylink,” notes the Guide. “Its prime reason for being is to provide [kids] with a swift, phantasmagorical panorama of one of the busiest airports on the planet.”
View or print the Guide for free at www.cheapflights.com/guides. You’ll be asked to sign up for an email newsletter which can be cancelled at any time.

Crime Rates and Lead Levels

Lead poisoning is known to impair intelligence and negatively affect learning and behavior. The developing brains of children are especially vulnerable.
Now, a study links lead exposure to crime rates. Rick Nevin, a senior advisor to the National Center for Healthy Housing, compared trends in childhood lead exposure to crime rate trends over several decades in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and five European nations.
Levels of lead measured in preschoolers from the 1930s to the 1970s generally tracked crime rates 18 to 23 years later, when those children were juveniles and young adults.
Lead paint was banned for residential use in 1978, and leaded gasoline was phased out in the early 1980s. Yet, with 38 million U.S. homes still containing lead paint, hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of lead poisoning, especially when those homes are renovated by contractors who don’t follow lead-safe work practices.
Many contractors are trained to work safely with lead, and advice about safe practices is available at www.epa.gov/lead. United Parents Against Lead, a national organization with headquarters in Richmond, also has information about identifying and preventing lead poisoning. It can be reached at (804) 714-1618 or www.upal.org.
The full report on the correlation between lead exposure and crime rates is at www.centerforhealthyhousing.org under the “What’s New” section.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Eight hundred children in the Richmond area live in foster care, and many more are involved in the juvenile justice system. For these young people, spending time with a strong role model may be just what they need to get a leg up on life.
Mentor Match, run by Lutheran Family Services of Virginia, aims to pair kids with volunteer mentors. Richmond is the site of its pilot program, which began with training sessions in July. (Mentor Match will expand to other areas of the state later this year and next.)
Mentor Match is funded by grant money from the U.S. Office of Juvenile Delinquency Prevention. Matches receive support and case management throughout the year from Mentor Match. For more information about becoming a mentor, see www.mentormatch.info or call (804)288-0122.