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Health and Environment Program

The Commonweal Health and Environment Program seeks to protect human and ecosystem health from environmental contaminants. Together with climate change, environmental contaminants represent one of the greatest threats to human and ecosystem health of our time.

Commonweal takes a science-based approach to the challenge of reducing manmade contaminants in the environment. The initiatives in which Commonweal is engaged include the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE), Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), the International POPS Elimination Network, and the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center.

• The Collaborative on Health and the Environment is a national partnership of individuals and organizations seeking to raise the level of scientific and public dialogue regarding environmental threats to human and ecosystem health.
• Health Care Without Harm is an international network of over 400 non-governmental organizations in 46 countries seeking to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in health care.
• Commonweal is active in many initiatives related to the promotion of the Precautionary Principle.

• Commonweal is one of the founders of the International POPS Elimination Network (IPEN), an international network of over 400 non-governmental organizations that played a key role in the negotiation and ratification of the Stockholm Convention. This United Nations convention mandates the elimination of twelve highly toxic persistent organic pollutants (POPS). It also includes a provision for the addition of further chemicals considered actionable under the provisions of the Convention.

  The Convention entered into force in May 2004, having been ratified by 50 countries. The United States has not yet ratified the Convention, and those IPEN participating organizations within the United States that were deeply engaged in supporting a strong Convention during negotiations are now working to ensure that the implementing language, the language by which the US would legally ratify the Convention, supports the spirit and intent of the Convention.

  IPEN has set up a program in developing countries to implement the Convention. Partially supported by the Global Environmental Facility, the International POPs Elimination Project (IPEP), supports eight regional hubs around the world who are raising public awareness about the health effects of POPs chemicals, are engaged in the National Implementation Plans of ratifying countries, and are supporting alternative technologies and materials that will help eliminate exposure to POPs.

  Sharyle Patton was former Northern Co-Chair of IPEN during the Convention negotiations and currently is co-chair of the IPEN Community Monitoring Working Group. Contact spatton@igc.org for more information about IPEN and IPEP.

• The Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center (CBRC) provides information and expertise to community-based groups and non-governmental organizations interested in many aspects of biomonitoring using human biospecimens. The Center helps communities design and implement biomonitoring studies, and provides information about previous studies, and links groups who have already conducted studies or who have used biomonitoring data for community campaigns to those interested in following a similar path.

  Part of the work of the CBRC is to support the implementation of health tracking measures in many states, which includes the setting up of disease registries, compiling and sharing biomonitoring data, as well as data about source and pathways of chemical exposures, and making health-tracking data user-friendly to communities and their members. Commonweal co-chairs the Planning Consortium of the California Health Tracking Project, a group of representatives from non-governmental organization, California state agency, academic institutions, and community-based organizations that helps guide health tracking implementation in California.

  CBRC supports the use of biomonitoring data in the development of market campaigns that encourage companies to develop toxic chemical free products. Commonweal has joined with the Environmental Working Group, National Environmental Trust, Women's Voices for the Earth, The Breast Cancer Fund and other non-governmental organizations in the safe cosmetics campaign, which provides information about those personal care products which do not contain chemicals linked to reproductive, carcinogenic, or neurological damage in humans, and encourages manufacturers in the US to discontinue their products that do contain these kinds of chemicals. For more information, see: http://www.SafeCosmetics.org.

  CBRC has joined with The Breast Cancer Fund in California to support a legislative initiative that would mandate community-based biomonitoring in California. If passed, the bill would significantly increase information for communities concerned with chemical exposures. For more information about this bill, or about the other programmatic interests of the CBRC, contact Sharyle Patton, CBRD Director:
  
  P.O. Box 316
  Bolinas, CA 94924
  (415) 868-0970
  spatton@igc.org