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Green Screen: D.C. Environmental Film Festival

Attendees of the 23rd Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital have traveled the world this past week, from the banks of the Anacostia to the harsh icescape of Antarctica, following pressing environmental issues and reveling in impressive cinematography. And the best part is, the adventure continues until March 29th.

The theme of this year’s festival is “Climate Connections,” but the screenings have covered a broad swathe of both local and global issues from sustainable agriculture to the pollution legacy of the fashion industry. Many of the films have highlighted environmental health issues, but several water-centric films told particularly poignant stories.  On Sunday, the festival held a “Women and Water” event in celebration of World Water Day, which featured films by women filmmakers. The first segment of the session featured stories of pollution and restoration that took place right in CHEJ’s backyard – in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers that run through Washington, D.C.

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Image from Stone Soup Films

‘The Anacostia River: Making Connections’ discussed the rampant discharge of industrial pollutants and trash into the Anacostia, which has threatened the river’s vitality and posed health risks to those who build community on its banks and eat fish from its waters. The film also documented heroic efforts to clean up the Anacostia, restoring it for generations to come. Watch the film here.

In ‘Potomac: The River Runs Through Us,’ researchers and advocates discussed the dependence of the nation’s capital on the waters of the Potomac River, where emerging contaminants like endocrine disruptors may be rearing their toxic heads. In its second half, ‘Women and Water’ expanded its scope from local to global. ‘Riverblue,’ a sobering work-in-progress film, shone light on the fashion industry’s pollution of rivers in India and Bangladesh, where workers must cope with both unsafe working conditions and an environment ravaged by the refuse of tanneries and garment factories.

The festival has curated over 160 films, many of which are showing for free at venues across the D.C. area for the rest of the week. The remaining schedule includes several films that highlight pollution and environmental health issues. Tomorrow (Tuesday), ‘Are Vah!’ tells the story of  of a French power company aspiring to build the largest nuclear plant in the world in a vital fishing and mango production zone of India. On Wednesday, ‘E-Waste Tragedy’ covers the environmental and health implications of toxic electronic waste, while ‘Landfill Harmonic’ discusses poverty and waste pollution in Paraguay. On Thursday, Our Canyon Lands will address pollution resulting from mining development in Utah.

For a full schedule of events, visit the film festival website.

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Environmental Defense Fund and Chemical Companies: Fool Me Twice?

Guest Reprint   By Ken Cook, President

It was abundantly clear at the recent Senate hearing that Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee have grave doubts about legislation the chemical industry has written to regulate itself (S.697).

Senators openly doubted the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review the safety of toxic industrial chemicals in a timely, much less urgent, manner under the bill or to ensure that chemicals ultimately are safe under the untested and dubious safety standard concocted especially for S.697. Indeed, a feat of imagination is required to believe that the industry’s proposed system will crack down on thousands of chemicals already in commerce that have been shown to cause cancer or birth defects or to wreak neurological havoc, among other harms.

At a House hearing last year, Jim Jones, the EPA’s top toxics regulator, estimated 1,000 chemicals are in need of urgent review. At the March 18 hearing he told senators the list might even be longer. With the legislation’s languid stream of just 25 high priority chemicals targeted for review in the first seven years, and its numerous procedural eddies where reviews might slowly spin for years, it could easily take over a century before EPA completes its study of the 1,000 most worrisome chemicals the agency has initially identified. And of course, the bill sets no deadline for taking regulatory action to ban or phase out dangerous chemicals if the agency concludes that is the proper course of action.

Several Democrats on the Senate panel were quick to point out that the ongoing assault on the EPA in the Republican budget makes the $18 million chemical companies will pony up to share the cost of chemical assessments reviews look even more inadequate. Meanwhile, the sweeping preemption of state authority proposed by the bill will ensure that legislators and regulators will be hamstrung from protecting their citizens.

Our colleagues at the Environmental Defense Fund, alone in the environmental movement, think otherwise. They have joined forces with the chemical industry to strongly support the legislation.

It’s worth noting that the last time EDF joined forces with chemical companies, it was played for a fool—and played for well over a decade. In 1998, EDF and the chemical industry joined forces to launch the HPV [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][High Production Volume] Challenge Program, a voluntary program for which the chemical industry would supposedly provide basic toxicity testing data on the most widely used chemicals in the nation. A high production volume chemical is defined as one that is produced or imported in amounts greater than 1 million pounds per year.

This program was launched after a 1984 review by the National Academies of Sciences and the National Research Council estimated that only 11 percent of high production volume chemicals had disclosed enough safety data to complete even a partial hazard assessment. Years later the EPA issued a detailed report confirming the lack of data and concluding that a striking 43 percent of “high production volume chemicals” had undergone zero testing data on basic toxicity. That’s right, 43 percent of the chemicals produced or imported in quantities greater than 1 million pounds a year were basically untested.

The HPV Challenge Program was a resounding failure. It turned out to be a win-win-win for chemical manufacturers: they managed to get away with minimal testing information, faced essentially no threat of chemical restriction and staved off reform of the broken Toxic Substances Control Act for nearly 20 years and counting. Dow Chemical Co. has a webpage declaring the HPV program “a tremendous success,” and the American Chemistry Council also champions the HPV program and its accomplishments.

But the EDF wrote a report in 2007 entitled “High Hopes, Low Marks” acknowledging that the HPV program was “still well away from delivering on the promises it made.” The organization has not issued a follow-up report or statement since 2007, other than noting how EDF had “impelled the chemical industry” to participate in the program. The Governmental Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, documented huge problems in the program, including its voluntary nature and the lack of sufficient information to support decisions on risk assessments of chemicals.

Today the program is in shambles and no longer seems to be active, and the public is no better protected from chemicals of concern. The HPV program boils down to decades of voluntary information collection without any action. What could be better in the eyes of the chemical industry?

Fast forward to 2015 and we have just watched EDF – alongside the chemical industry – come out in strong support of what is being billed as a chemical safety bill that “creates strong protections against hidden health threats.” Yet in reality, this legislation, S.697, introduced by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and David Vitter (R-La.), is actually worse than current law.

This new industry-supported bill would fail to ensure that chemicals are safe, fail to set meaningful deadlines for safety reviews, fail to set deadlines for bans or restrictions when needed, fail to provide EPA with adequate resources and deny states the ability to protect public health and the environment.

While the industry bill would grant the EPA some new authorities and generate some new safety data, the overall package would not enable the agency to take the necessary actions required to protect public health effectively. This bill was written from the ground up NOT to protect public health but to protect chemical industry profit margins. The American public needs a chemical bill that shifts the burden onto industry for proving that chemicals are safe and that ensures EPA has the necessary authority to take action! My children and your children deserve better—and we must demand it on their behalf.

Environmental Working Group 1436 U Street, NW Suite 100 Washington, DC 20009 www.EWG.org

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Did Chemical Company Author New Chemical Bill

In recent days, a draft of the bill — considered the product of more than two years of negotiation and collaboration between Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and both chemical industry and environmental groups — was circulated by Udall’s office ahead of the hearing. The draft bill, obtained by Hearst Newspapers, is in the form of a Microsoft Worddocument. Rudimentary digital forensics — going to “advanced properties” in Word — shows the “company” of origin to be the American Chemistry Council.   Read full story here.

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Chemical Exposures and Health Care Costs

A new economic analysis has concluded that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals likely costs the European Union €157 billion ($209 billion U.S.) a year in actual health care expenses and lost earning potential, according to a new series of studies published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

A total of four papers were published (overview, neurobehavioral, male reproduction and obesity & diabetes) that focused on specific health conditions that can partly be attributed to endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) exposure. These included infertility and male reproductive dysfunction, birth defects, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and neurobehavioural and learning disorders. A team of eighteen researchers from eight countries led by Leonardo Trasande, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Environmental Medicine & Population Health at NYU Medical Center, were involved in this landmark initiative.

EDCs interfere with numerous hormone functions and are commonly found in thousands of household products including plastics made with vinyl, electronics, pesticides, and cosmetics.

The overview paper concluded that “EDC exposures in the EU are likely to contribute substantially to disease and dysfunction across the life course with costs in the hundreds of billions per year. These estimates represent only those EDCs with the highest probability of causation; a broader analysis would have produced greater estimates of burden of disease and costs.”

The papers were prepared in conjunction with an evaluation being done by the EU Commission of the economic impact to industry of regulating EDCs in Europe. According to the authors, “Our goal here is to estimate the health and economic benefit of regulating EDCs in Europe, based on current evidence.”

The expert panels put together for this analysis “achieved consensus for probable (20%) EDC causation for IQ loss and associated intellectual disability, autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, childhood obesity, adult obesity, adult diabetes, cryptorchidism, male infertility, and mortality associated with reduced T.”

“The analysis demonstrates just how staggering the cost of widespread endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure is to society,” said Leonardo Trasande, the lead author in a press statement released by the Endocrine Society. “This research crystalizes more than three decades of lab and population-based studies of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the EU.”

The press release goes on to say:

“In the EU, researchers found the biggest cost driver was loss of IQ and intellectual disabilities caused by prenatal exposure to pesticides containing organophosphates. The study estimated the harm done to unborn children costs society between €46.8 billion and €195 billion a year. About 13 million lost IQ points and 59,300 additional cases of intellectual disability per year can be attributed to organophosphate exposure.

“Adult obesity linked to phthalate exposure generated the second-highest total, with estimated costs of €15.6 billion a year.

“Our findings show that limiting exposure to the most common and hazardous endocrine-disrupting chemicals is likely to yield significant economic benefits,” said one of the study’s authors, Philippe Grandjean, MD, PhD, Professor of Environmental Medicine at the University of Southern Denmark and Adjunct Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “This approach has the potential to inform decision-making in the environmental health arena. We are hoping to bring the latest endocrine science to the attention of policymakers as they weigh how to regulate these toxic chemicals.”

The impact of this paper is staggering. It should be a “wake up call” said Linda Birnbaum, Director of the U.S. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences when asked about the results. It also provides more evidence that low level exposure to chemicals found in everyday household products is affecting the health of many people not just in the Europe, but worldwide.

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Putting the ‘Teeth’ into TSCA: A Tale of Two Bills

TSCA, the Toxic Substances Control Act, is meant to do as its name suggests – control the introduction of potentially toxic chemicals into personal care products and the environment. The law, introduced in 1976, has been left untouched for decades. The chemical market now contains over 85,000 chemicals, with about 1,000 new chemicals introduced every year – and TSCA’s rules have only resulted in bans on five of these substances. ‘TSCA has no teeth’ is a common refrain among environmentalists, and speaks to the Act’s general incompetence in protecting human and environmental health.

How does TSCA work, and what makes it so ineffective? Essentially, TSCA requires that the EPA maintain a list – the TSCA Inventory – of all chemical substances that are manufactured or processed in the U.S.  Though companies must let the EPA know they are starting to manufacture a chemical, they have no responsibility to provide safety data along with this notice. The EPA can only require testing once they have proven the chemical presents a “potential risk,” creating a massive loophole for untested but potentially hazardous chemicals to enter the market. Not only are new chemicals subject to no scrutiny, but in-use chemicals are given the benefit of the doubt. When TSCA was first introduced, it “grandfathered in” all existing chemicals with the assumption they were safe for use. It’s readily apparent that there are more loopholes than law in TSCA.

Luckily, TSCA reform is back on the table, with the introduction of two new chemical regulation bills to Congress just last week. On March 10, Senators David Vitter and Tom Udall introduced a new bill that builds incrementally on a previous reform attempt, the Chemical Safety Improvement Act. Though the Udall-Vitter bill gives the EPA more power to regulate and requires safety testing of current and new chemicals, it has drawn criticism from environmental groups. The coalition Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families released a letter critiquing the bill’s classification system for chemicals, which groups them as “High Priority” or “Low Priority” after an initial review. Chemicals deemed High Priority will be subject to further testing to determine their safety, while Low Priority chemicals will not, a distinction that may open a so-called ‘Low Priority Loophole’ with the potential for abuse by industry. Additionally, the bill curtails the ability of states to set their own more stringent regulations, a fact many environmental groups have criticized.

Senators Barbara Boxer and Ed Markey introduced their own bill, the Alan Reinstein and Trevor Schaefer Toxic Chemical Protection Act, on Thursday. Named after two cancer survivors, the bill employs stricter standards for chemical safety evaluation, sets deadlines for determining safety, and also allows states to continue to employ stricter regulations than those at the federal level. The Environmental Working Group has praised the bill, including its changes to safety-standard language. Instead of requiring EPA to prove a chemical has “no unreasonable risk of harm,” the bill sets the standard as “reasonable certainty of no harm” – the same standard that is applied to food additives and pesticides. The bill requires that the EPA consider risks that might result from unintended chemical spills, not just intended exposure levels. It also fast-tracks the safety analysis of asbestos, a proven cancer-causing agent that TSCA has thus far failed to regulate.

The Boxer-Markey bill shifts the burden of proof for chemical safety determination in a significant way. Rather than requiring proof of a chemical’s ‘unreasonable’ harm before regulation, it requires ‘reasonable’ certainty of its safety. Of course, there are still nuances and uncertainties in the determination of what constitutes “reasonable” safety, just as “unreasonable” harm is a flexible concept. All things considered, the Boxer-Markey bill takes the furthest step toward precaution that we have yet seen in Congress.

May the best bill win!

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Ted Glick: It’s Time to Seize the Moment and Ratchet Up the Pressure

For the third time in less than two years, I met yesterday with the chair of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. I was not alone. With me from the “good guys” side were Tracey Eno, leader of Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community in Cove Point, Maryland; Jocelyn D’Ambrosio of Earthjustice and; via phone because her plane arrived late due to weather, Sandra Steingraber from href=”http://www.wearesenecalake.com/” target=”_blank”>We Are Seneca Lake.

On the “power” side were FERC chair Cheryl LaFleur and literally eight other FERC staff from various parts of their bureaucracy.

More than 2,000 climate justice activists assembled for a rally and march—in Washington, DC at The National Mall on July 13, 2014—to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in opposition to the expansion of a natural gas transfer and storage facility at Cove Point on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Photo credit: Stephen Melkisethian/Flicr

My first time meeting with the then-FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff was in May of 2013. The second time was last June with Cheryl LaFleur. In both cases, as was true of this one, the meetings happened after I and others had gone to one of FERC’s monthly commissioners’ meetings and made our presence felt.

A month ago, after going to FERC with representatives of Green America for a meeting they had set up with Commissioner Phillip Moeller, I was “banned,” the security guard’s word, from the FERC building, escorted out of the meeting room on the 11th floor we had been taken to just as the meeting was about to start. However, several hours later, after contacting someone I knew in the press, I got a call from the executive director of FERC apologizing and telling me I was not banned.

The meeting yesterday was requested just before my temporary banishment. It was requested on behalf of Beyond Extreme Energy, which has been ratcheting up the pressure and putting a public spotlight on the many serious problems with the way FERC works. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has called it “a rogue agency.”

What was our hope in requesting the meeting? Our hope, slim as we knew it to be, was that perhaps in the context of a “civilized” sit-down in this way, we could see some signs that the campaign that has been building over the last couple of years to make FERC work for the people and not the fossil fuel industry has had some impact.

There was little sign of that yesterday. After we raised our well-reasoned criticisms of FERC, their rubber-stamping of proposed gas infrastructure expansion projects, their minimal efforts to prioritize wind and solar technologies, they didn’t have much to say. After we pushed it, LaFleur did reference some rule changes they had made to make it easier for those technologies to become part of the electrical grid, and another person did want to know more of our thinking about what they should be doing in the area of renewables. But as Steingraber said afterwards, LaFleur’s main response was to say, in effect, “We’re trying to take it in, we are listening,” little more.

The one exception to this was in the area of FERC’s processes—their website, the meetings they set up and how they deal with administrative appeals after granting a permit for gas infrastructure expansion. There was a bit more, not much, back and forth with FERC staff in these areas. Perhaps, over time, we will see some modifications. Time will tell.

The meeting made crystal clear that we need to sieze the time and ratchet up the pressure. Fortunately, Beyond Extreme Energy is doing so, moving forward with its week-plus of action at FERC from May 21-29. That’s when our growing movement can show our power and speak the truth in powerful ways to those using theirs wrongly. Our children and grandchildren are calling upon us to step it up right now!

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Ohio Governor flip flops on shale boom.

Strange, this is what citizens have been saying about the shale boom for years, good thing the governor finally caught on.  Taken from Ohio Governor John Kasich’s State of the State speech.

GOVERNOR KASICH: …okay. So we’re talking about not just saving money in government spending, but we’re talking about tax reform. Some things go up, other things go down, but to provide the incentive for the least negative impact on the private economy.

Severance taxes, that’s another place where we need tax reform. The reason is simple. Our current system doesn’t reflect our current reality. Ohio’s severance tax was created decades ago, long before Ohio’s shale boom was ever envisioned. Its current low rate: 20 cents on a barrel of oil.

I don’t know anybody who lives in Ohio who would not like to sign up for this, twenty cents on a barrel of oil. It’s unconscionable as far as I’m concerned. It’s not right. It isn’t fair to Ohioans, because these resources are being depleted. They’re never coming back. Ohio’s being made poorer as a result of the depletion of our resources. It’s like oil and gas itself.

Much of the wealth the shale boom is generating is being shipped out of our state, being shipped out of Ohio.

We need to change that while at the same time making sure that Ohio’s long time small drillers—the ones who have been around for years and make very little money. We want to just get rid of their income taxes altogether but we also want to make sure that local governments are supported when their calls for first responders and infrastructure or other essential services are forced to go up because of the oil and gas activity. Okay? All of it.

(Applause.)

GOVERNOR KASICH: The prosperity created by our oil and gas deposits can be great not just for shale country. This is not just for part of Ohio but for all of Ohio because it makes possible the income tax cuts that provide an economic boost statewide.

I’m disappointed by those who say the severance tax reform will kill the industry. That’s a joke. That’s a big fat joke because I’ve talked to them in private. And I’ll tell you what, our severance tax will still be competitive with our energy-rich states. And you know what? Let’s reform the severance tax so all Ohioans can have lower income taxes and we all benefit from this whole industry. That’s what it should be all about.

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Staying Safe (Probably): Risk, Hazard and Chemical Regulation

‘Risk’ and ‘hazard.’

These two words are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings in the context of chemical safety assessment. When we say a particular chemical is ‘hazardous,’ we are noting its mere potential to cause negative health or environmental effects. On the other hand, ‘risk’ describes the probability that these negative effects will actually occur under specific circumstances. In order to generate a measurable risk, some exposure to the hazard in question must occur.


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Both a hazard and an exposure are necessary for a risk to exist.


If you have followed my last several posts, you’ve probably caught on to the idea that attempting to declare a chemical ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ is an exercise in futility. To comprehensively determine risk, we must know not only the detailed structure and function of a chemical, but also understand the intricacies of its interactions with the environment and the human body. Current chemical regulation in the United States operates within a risk-based framework. We establish standards and criteria for acceptable levels of hazardous compounds in products, in the environment and in our bodies; we enact bans and restrictions on chemicals in order to limit our exposures. These regulations are the product of risk assessments, which report not only the hazardous properties of chemicals but also the likelihood of human exposure.

My recent post on BPA illustrates the complexity of risk assessment. Though BPA has demonstrated hazardous potential, the levels to which humans are exposed to the compound, and therefore the actual risks of its use, are uncertain. Exposure may seem like a simple factor to evaluate, but our understanding of exposure is continually evolving, particularly with consideration for the special vulnerability of developing babies and children.  The ban on BPA in baby bottles reflects this emerging awareness of long-term effects of chemical exposures. However, the replacement of BPA with BPS illustrates the shortcomings of an approach that controls risk by limiting exposure to specific high-profile hazardous compounds.

The replacement of BPA, a known hazard, with BPS – an untested and unregulated compound with a nearly identical structure – may be considered an example of what scientists and regulators refer to as “regrettable substitution.” Regrettable substitution occurs when we eliminate one hazardous chemical from consumer products, only to replace it with a similar or even more hazardous alternative. Our risk-based chemical regulation enables us to remove demonstrably dangerous chemicals from consumer products, but also leaves profound loopholes for new chemicals, untested and unregulated, to enter the market in their stead, as long as risk assessments have not proven them dangerous. In a 2010 post on his Environmental Defense Fund blog, Dr. Richard Denison refers to this process as playing “whack-a-mole” with chemicals. No sooner have we knocked one hazardous chemical back into its hole, than a replacement rears its likely-hazardous head…until we generate evidence of its actual risk and seek to replace it with another unknown quantity.

Is this game of “whack-a-chemical” inevitable, or do more precautionary approaches exist? In Europe, regulators are striving for a balance between risk assessment and the more protective approach of hazard classification. While risk assessment relies on scientific studies to determine the risks of chemicals under different exposure scenarios, hazard classification groups chemicals based on their inherent hazard potential. It is this potential to cause harm that guides regulation, not demonstrated adverse effects.  A hazard classification regulatory scheme might have prevented BPS from entering the market, since its structural similarities to BPA make it a likely health hazard.

Hazard classification is essentially a more precautionary approach to chemical regulations. And when we operate in a framework of precaution rather than risk, the regulatory question itself changes. “A precautionary approach asks how much harm can be avoided rather than asking how much is acceptable,” write Dr. Ted Schettler and coauthors in a 2002 essay on the role of the Precautionary Principle in regulation and policymaking.

How can we better incorporate the Precautionary Principle into the chemical regulation process in the US? This question has been at the epicenter of the debate on reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which I will cover next time on Backyard Talk.

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Why The West VA Oil Spill Will Not Be The Last

A ball of fire engulfed the town of Mount Carbon West Virginia. In a freaky déjà vu moment reminiscent of the events of April of last year in Lynchburg VA, a train hauling more than 100 tankers derailed during a snowstorm on Monday in West Virginia. Just like last year, the train operator was CSX. Just like last year, a local river was contaminated. And just like last year, the train was carrying crude oil from the increasingly fracked Bakken formation in North Dakota.

These moments of déjà vu are increasingly becoming common. In a 10 month period from March 2013 to January 2014, 10 major crude oil spills occurred due to train accidents. In the last week alone, two major oil railcar incidents made headlines – one being the incident in West VA and the other a similar accident in Ontario, Canada.

Why is all this happening? Simple. Oil and gas production has increased exponentially in the past few years mainly due to the fracking boom that has taken over the country. The amount of oil being transported through rail has increased from 9,500 carloads in 2008, to over 400,000 in 2013 according to the Association of American Railroads; and 2014 figures are expected to far surpass this number. More oil equals more trains – and more trains equal more accidents.

The oil and gas industry has spent millions of dollars to convince the nation that fracking is safe and environmentally friendly. Its several potential dangers, from groundwater contamination and exhaustion to public health and social issues, are unquestionable truths that are clouded in the eyes of the public by constant streams of money from the industry. Now, the increase in railroad accidents, like the Mount Carbon spill, are a new threat to add to the long list of hazards due to fracking. And as this new danger gains more media attention, the oil and gas industry will be the reason why this oil spill will not be the last.

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Health Studies: What you can expect and what you can do

Whether your group is new or has been organized for years, one of the most pressing questions you’ll face is about health problems in your community. Typically, if you raise enough public attention and pressure, the state will ask the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to do a health study. While you may initially be excited, be careful what you ask for. ATSDR has a poor track record at investigating health problems in communities. You are more likely to get a result that is “inconclusive by design” than you are to get an honest answer to your questions. At least that’s what history tells us.

You can expect at least two things from ATSDR: First, the agency is going to treat your community like every other community that they have gone into. Second, ATSDR is going to use the standard methods they use to evaluate and investigate the health problems in your community.  Unfortunately, these scientific methods cannot answer with any accuracy or assurance the questions that people have about health problems in their community. The best state-of-the-art scientific methods that ATSDR will use cannot determine what’s causing an increase in cancer, birth defects or any other adverse effect in a population of people.

In 99 out of 100 instances, health studies conducted by ATSDR or other government agencies are inconclusive or at best incapable of determining what might be causing an observed increase in a disease found in a community. Given this likely outcome, it’s critical to have a plan for how to get the most from a health study done in your community.

One important step is to define as a community what you want. Do you want a typical epidemiological study where a questionnaire is distributed throughout the community asking about health problems and the results are then compared to a matched unexposed community? Do you want a clinic set up in the community where people could be tested to evaluate their health? Maybe some portion of the community wants to be relocated or evacuated and you want ATSDR to recommend such action.

Once you’re clear on what you want, then you need to figure out how to achieve these goals. This will take some strategic planning and a strong organized community effort. Ask these three questions about the health study, the answers to which will give you a good sense of the intent of the investigators and the limits of the study:

  • What are the goals of the investigation?
  • How will the investigators get the information they need?
  • How are they going to release the results?

Based on what you find out, you may decide that you don’t want to participate in this study. Or you may decide you want to change the agency’s plan to something that will be useful to your group. Changing their plan will require a strong organized community effort and a plan to get your points across to the agency. CHEJ can help you develop a plan to address a health study. Contact us at chej@chej.org

Also, tune in tomorrow at 12 noon EST to participate in a training session on Health Studies: What can they tell you about health problems in your community?


(RSVP Online Now)