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Statement Of Gertrude McQueen
Environmental Protection Agency
Aging Initiative Public Listening Session
Iowa City, Iowa
April 15, 2003
I am the one you want to hear from! I am 83 years old. My husband is 85 years old. We have been in health care, as participants. And now as beneficiaries of health care, we helped provide for the state of Iowa. And I want to say that the same things that make it healthy for all of you kids make it healthy for old folks. You don't have to separate us out and say "this is something special." Clean air! Clean water! Clean water with very low arsenic levels. Remember that, sport fans? The arsenic level was dropped. And then, when the Administration fought against it, it was raised again. It is now at about the acceptable level for arsenic in our water. Air pollution is everywhere. We are faced with these kinds of disease and we have to live in a society, which we have worked very hard to make a very good society. I must say that the Environmental Protection Agency is a disappointment in this Administration. I hope that these hearings are going to make a difference in the way the Environmental Protection Agency treads across our lives because we are important, we are alive, and we belong here