good morning, everybody. thanks for joining us. i'm on assignment in los angeles. we have a lot of ground to cover on what the presidential candidates are promising for your health care. we'll talk about that. also my investigation on toxic schools. could they be making your students sick? a story i have been looking at for more than a year now. growing evidence repeated blows to the head, the kind you get on the football field can have lasting rep recushions. a law take effect in california. a player who gets a concussion

must be cleared by a trainer or doctor before going back on the field. the risk is hard to gauge. you can't see damage to the brain unless you actually look inside. of course by then, it's too late. football is a violent game, full of big hits. what are all those collisions doing to the brain inside the helmets? i met with kevin, he's a researcher from the university of north carolina. he can measure the intensity of the hits. a moderate hit and see what happens. >> it's recorded up here at 23.6 gs of acceleration. >> he won a grant for his work on concussions in football. >> he's going to with stand an impact 157 gs. >> wow. it's similar to a car accident. >> right. the question is how many of

those big impacts can a player with stand over the course of a season orca rear before there's damage? >> on average, high school players sustain more than 650 blows to the head every season. that worries him because their brains aren't as developed as adults. the tissue of that brain is elastic. think of a brain like an egg yolk. the fluids around it being the whites. >> it's about that joke moving within the shell or the skull in this case. >> a helmet is not designed to do that to the level that will prevent concussion. >> he sits on the nfl health and safety committee. today, he's showing me around the sports spectacular. it's a hands-on clinic devoted to teaching players and coaches

about head injuries. the event is named after this 15-year-old winston salem high school sophomore. >> he was an eagle scout. he was an actor. >> his biggest passion was football. >> we go to see notre dame play army, i think it was. we are right at the tunnel. he says dad are you going to see me run out of the tunnel? >> friday night, august 22, 2008. it was his first varsity game. with minutes left, matthew was hit. he doesn't get up. >> he couldn't breathe. he was struggling to breathe. pupils were totally dielated. no reaction. no movement. >> he died early sunday morning. you have to come back home to your house without your child. >> unbelievable.

>> i'm going to ask when you leave this field today you never again use the word ding or bell ringer. you mean a brain injury. >> they have found meaning in their son's death by partnering with kevin. their message, you can make football safer. >> so, what we are trying to show, if you are watching the defensive player, he's keeping the head up. leading with that initial muchlt. his arms forward. >> for this family, it's so much more than football. legacies. this is an important thing. >> absolutely. >> for me, when i see all these boys learning, all the coaches learning, i think people are going to be safer this season. there are going to be children not at the hospital because of this event. that gives us a lot of satisfaction. >> you can see much more about this in my documentary next

weekend. it's about a teen we followed in north carolina looking to turn tragedy into triumph. can you play a safer game and still win. big hits broken dreams january 29th here on cnn. you know, in the presidential race, all the attention is on south carolina and the republicans. last week, i looked at mitt romney's handling of health care as massachusetts governor. today, two rivals. newt gingrich is blasting so-called romneycare. he hasn't always felt that way. back in 2006, gingrich called it exciting and said quote, the health bill that governor romney signed in law has tremendous potential to affect major change in the american health system. on the controversial question should everyone be required to have insurance, gingrich changed his mind. listen to what he had to say about mandates specifically on

nbcs "meet the press." >> i said consistently, we ought to have some requirements either health insurance or post a bond or indicate you are held responsib responsible. >> that is the mandate, isn't it? >> the one thing they have in come is they want to repeal obamacare and start over. gingrich posted his plan. more high risk pools for people too sick to buy insurance. change medicaid into a grant program and give americans tax grants to purchase the health coverage. on to ron paul, he's actually a physician. he practices in obgyn. he says medicare and medicaid are unconstitutional. it led to a controversial moment in a cnn debate where paul was asked a hypothetical question, a 30-year-old man who doesn't buy insurance and gets into a

terrible accident. paul says the 30-year-old should assume responsibility. take a listen. >> that's what freedom is about, taking your own ris. the idea you have to take care of everybody -- >> congressman, are you saying society should let him die? >> no. i practice medicine before we had medicaid in the early 1960s when i got out of medical school. i practiced in san antonio. the churches took care of them. we never turned anybody away from the hospital. >> under paul's plan, a person could buy insurance or pay their doctors cash. in both cases they get 100% tax credit on every dollar spent. we can make it more affordable letting people shop over state lines. in other news, paula dean

announced she has diabetes. she's known for picking up rich, delicious southern food. more good than good for you. now, she's promising more healthy versions. it got us thinking. meals you thought never could be healthy. think mac and cheese. there are healthier options. we'll show you, next. so who ordered the cereal that can help lower cholesterol and who ordered the yummy cereal? yummy. [ woman ] lower cholesterol. [ man 2 ] yummy. i got that wrong didn't i? [ male announcer ] want great taste and whole grain oats

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as we hunker down for winter, a lot of us reach for comfort food, chili, spaghetti and meat balls x mac and cheese. there's a reason grandma's food tasted so good. >> that would be butter and lard. all the things we are afraid of now. >> it doesn't have to be so bad. >> it needs to have a good nutritional profile. >> for mac and cheese -- >> start with the lower fat milk to cut back on calryes are add

vegetables to it. >> spaghetti and meat balls. >> use lean, ground turkey. switch up yor pasta option. >> lower carbs and fewer calories. chili? >> add beans and mushrooms and carrots. >> join us, grab a spoon. >> looks good. that's food for life. you know, in september, the fit nation crew and i are going to be running, biking, swimming in the malibu triathlon. training can be tough. when i need inspiration, i think of scout basset what does it all with one leg. on a hot los angeles day, you'll found scout outside on the roof of her apartment building logging miles on her mike.

she's a dedicated multiathlete. she's run marathons and raced triathlons all with one leg. >> this has been very good to me. done a lot of long miles. >> she lost her leg when she was a baby. it was the beginning of a difficult childhood. >> i was burned in a fire in china and when i turned 1-year-old, i was placed on the streets in front of the government orphanage. when i came here to the u.s., i was 7 years old and weighed 22 pounds. >> she never left her ar fannage before being ap adopted. overnight, she was found in a new family, a new country, surrounded by strangers and unable to speak english. >> everybody is looking at you, wanting to know what's going on, who you are, where you come from. it's like i'm not sure what's happening. how am i supposed to explain it

to you. >> exercise became a refuge. >> being able to see that was something that changed my life forever. seeing what's possible out there. >> she started to race triathlons herself. swimming without a leg because it weighed her down. switching to a foot with a bike leg. >> race-by-race, training day by training day, i gained a confidence that i lacked much of my life and became a person who really believed in myself for the first time. >> she has no plans of slowing down. she now trains with the u.s. national paralympic team. i hope she -- follow along and

be our partner in it. coming up, i'm going to show you what i found on my latest investigation. learning your kids have been going to school every day in a building contaminated by toxic waste and no one told you. i can tell you this, it's not just one school. that's next. dad, why are you getting that? is there a prize in there? oh, there's a prize, all right. [ male announcer ] inside every box of cheerios are those great-tasting little o's made from carefully selected oats that can help lower cholesterol. is it a superhero? kinda. ♪

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welcome back to "sgmd." i'm in los angeles this morning. since the 1990s, they have paid millions for public schools including $33 million for one sight. they had a clean up for rachel carson and al gore. the thing is this, toxic schools aren't just a problem here in los angeles. look what we found in the bronx of new york. it's a charter school called

ps51. >> i need your lunch bag. >> okay. >> she's helping her son get ready for the first day of school. brandon seems excited. his mother seems nervous. >> i always burn myself with this. >> this is more than a case of first day jitters. >> i cannot wait to get to school. >> in august, just weeks before school started, she saw this emergency meeting notice taped to his school. ps51, in the bronx. that night, she joined an auditorium packed with worried parents. chancellor dennis opened with a dramatic statement. >> i want to start by apologi apologizing to you. >> he followed with disturbing reviews. >> your school came with the result we were not satisfied with with an elevated level of

tce. >> it's a correspond sin general. it can cause parkinson's, cancer and death. tests tce levels at 100 times worse than what's considered safe. >> based on the final confirmation, we thought we needed to shut the building down. >> reporter: parents are upset. >> you are using euphemisms, trying to be nice. that was a building that was storing chemicals that were cancer-causing agents and because of the vicinity and the children that are involved, you didn't care. >> you guys, board of ed, first allowed it to be as a school for our children. i think it's so inappropriate. >> reporter: but the parents were even more upset by the fact that the department of education discovered the contamination in january. yet, parents weren't told and their children were kept in class through the end of the year.

>> i voice my displeasure with our folks and myself as far as the timeliness of that notification and from this point on, whenever we get a positive notification around some type of environmental issue, the parent, community, the staff and school community will be notified immediately. >> reporter: i met marisol outside that contaminated school. >> the staff, the kids, all the people who are essentially in this building, a good chunk of their days, knew nothing about this? >> no. the chancellor said he was sorry. >> how worried are you? >> very worried. >> this is the school right here. >> reporter: she says even brandon, who's normally upbeat, is worried. >> you like this new building? >> uh-huh. >> do you know why you're in the new building? >> yeah. >> why? >> because it closed down of tce a chemical. >> you know all that. what do you know about tce?

>> well, it's a cancer-causing chemical. >> wow. >> reporter: we wanted to ask chancellor woolcot why they didn't tell parents about the toxic chemical in the school until months after they knew about it. his office declined to speak to cnn. >> for the sheer callusness and recklessness of the behavior towards kids this is as bad as i've seen. >> reporter: this lawyer has won a number of tce contamination suits for communities around the country. >> the people that ran this school and their environmental consultants knew for at least six months that there were dangerous levels, some cases off the charts levels, of chemicals in the air these kids were breathing and yet they let those kids go there day in and day out, every day for the rest of a semester unconscionable. >> reporter: collins says the building should never have been a school into it's an old industrial site, not a place to have kids going to school. >> reporter: new york city

records show p.s. 51 did house a car garage and lamp factory. tce, once used to decrea todd t could have been left over waste. who digs up the past of toxic schools. >> we don't consider contamination before we decide where to put the school. and particularly in new york city, they have so many schools on leased properties, most of which are former industrial sites or at least many of which, i don't know the exact number, they had a policy of not looking for problems. >> reporter: segal believes that ground and water testing should be mandatory. he also says p.s. 51 was probably always problematic. just weeks before brandon and the other p.s. 51 kids started at their new school, parents were hit with more unsettling news. tests revealed slightly elevated levels of a common, but toxic

dry cleaning chemical, pce. >> what's going to happen to our children? >> reporter: parents showed up at another meeting in october to confront the chancellor. >> i first have to say dennis woolcot, how dare you. >> how dare you. >> reporter: the chancellor dismissed the test results at the new school as insignificant. >> there was an open container and once that was corrected the levels came back down and things were fine. >> reporter: parents like marisol no longer trust the school system. >> what's the plan? >> we're going to watch him consistently. any little thing that he gets is going to be an alarm for me. he's 8 years old and it's scary that i have to see what's going to happen with him. i pray that nothing is going to come of this. but you just don't know. >> another thing i learned in doing this story, as many as one in three schools have air quality so bad, it can cause

breathing problems. sometimes there are rules to protect kids. it's just those rules aren't always enforced. in new york city, for example, it's illegal for cars and trucks to idle for more than one minute outside a school, because toxic exhaust fumes can seep into the building. but in the past year in the entire bronx, that's the home of p.s. 51, police issued just 12 tickets for breaking that law. health advocates say the city needs to step it up. last month the mayor said he would look into it but also said officers have more serious things to tackle first. time for a short break. i'll be back with a special preview of my upcoming documentary.

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on any given friday at countless american schools, more than 4 million kids are playing tackle football. they're our kids going head-to-head and helmet-to-helmet. i'll tell you a lot of things about this. we know it's not all fun and games. it can be dangerous at times. at j.h. rose high school in

north carolina, they saw all of this firsthand three years ago, the worst happened to this championship team. >> my little brother. he's not moving, he needs help breathing. i mean, i just lost it. >> waller was tackled, walked to the sidelines and collapsed. >> friday's death of waller is being felt. >> it's a tough time for the whole community. >> we had a tragedy and it really brought it all to the forefront. >> we spent the season with the rose rampants, a team trying hard now to turn tragedy into triumph and questions came up over and over again, can you play safe and still win at football? can you play safe and still have football be football? the answer is yes, but like most things that count, it doesn't come easily. you're about to meet the players, the families and doctors who will tell you something that you might not want to hear but it's also something that may just save our kids.