My first job out of college was testing children for lead poisoning. Scientists knew lead could lower IQ and cause long-term developmental delays. Yet, largely as a result of tailpipe and smokestack emissions, 88 percent of American children had elevated blood lead levels in the 1970s. A few years later, the Clean Air Act began phasing out lead from gasoline and reducing power plant pollution. By the mid-1990s, blood lead levels in children had dropped by 78 percent, and by 2000, only 2.2 percent of American children had high levels of lead in their blood.

The lead program and other environmental initiatives have improved the health of millions of Americans over the past four decades. The Clean Air Act alone has prevented more than 200,000 premature deaths and 850,000 asthma attacks every year since 1990, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Yet the Tea Party is leading a push to erase those gains. With indiscriminate antigovernment fervor, Republican leaders believe the EPA has no business regulating pollution. Since the GOP took control, the House has been asked to cast votes nearly 160 times on measures to block or limit environmental safeguards. This is the most coordinated attack we have witnessed in the past 40 years.

NRDC is pushing back hard. First, we have launched a series of targeted campaigns that connect environmental issues with the basic concerns of American families, especially their health, the food they eat, the air they breathe, and the water they drink. This is a return to our roots, to a time when most Americans understood that the environmental movement sought to protect everyone's well-being. We need to communicate that message more clearly and effectively than ever. Second, we will support elected officials who safeguard our health and our environment and hold accountable those who do not. Finally, we will develop more and broader partnerships with those in the business community who share our goals.

If Tea Party rhetoric became reality, I don't think Americans would take kindly to a more toxic world that posed a greater threat to their families' well-being. I don't know one parent who wants to expose her children to more lead, mercury, or smog. That's why NRDC remains committed to strengthening the protections that place the well-being of the many above the narrow interests of the few.