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Pollution Prevention
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The Center for Environmental Health promotes pollution prevention to stop toxins at their source, before they become a threat to public health. We are committed to environmental justice, reducing the use of toxic chemicals, supporting communities in their quest for a safer environment, and corporate accountability.
Current projects:
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Health Care
 The healthcare industry is a source of both healing and harm. Hospitals are home to a number of toxic chemicals that have adverse effects on patient and staff health and safety.
The Center for Environmental Health is a key member of the Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) coalition, a broad-based
international campaign to address the environmental impacts of
health care without compromising worker safety or patient care.
HCWH is comprised of nearly 400 organizations in 45 countries
including traditional health care organizations, religious constituencies,
labor unions, health-affected constituencies and environmental
groups, who agree that as providers and consumers of health care,
we all have a place in the campaign.
CEH works to support and strengthen hospitals in their efforts to be protectors of public health. We support the following HCWH goals:
- Promoting comprehensive pollution prevention practices.
- Supporting the development and use of environmentally safe materials, technology and products.
- Educating and informing health care institutions, providers, workers, consumers, and all affected constituencies about the environmental and public health impacts of the health care industry and solutions to its problems.
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Upcoming 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Hospital Roundtables:
Environmentally Preferable Purchasing & Management of Electronics
-Coming Soon!
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Information from past roundtables are available to view online. Visit our "Green Hospitals Roundables" page and click on the link to the roundtable to view speakers' presentations, materials from the event, and more.
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iHealthBeat Article on HCWH and CEH's Work with Hospitals and Electronics
January 4, 2007
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Electronics
Electronics contain a number substances and materials that are hazardous to human health. Improper disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) poses a significant threat to human and environmental health.
CEH focuses on working with large institutional purchasers, particularly in the healthcare sector, to promote the sustainable purchase and disposal of electronic products. We act as a liaison between Health Care Without Harm and the Computer TakeBack Campaign (CTBC)
The goal of CTBC is to protect the health and well being of electronics users, workers, and the communities where electronics are produced and discarded by requiring consumer electronics manufacturers and brand owners to take full responsibility for the life cycle of their products, through effective public policy requirements or enforceable agreements.
CEH supports the core principles of CTBC's goals:
- Take It Back: Encourage producer responsibility for meeting specific goals for electronics recovery, reuse, and recycling, and shift financial responsibility and potential liability from taxpayer-funded collection and disposal programs back to the manufacturers.
- Make It Clean: Require manufacturers of consumer electronic devices to meet specific reduction goals and implement programs to phase down - and where feasible, cut out - the use of hazardous materials in their products.
- Recycle Responsibly: Provide market-based incentives for manufacturers to design products for recyclability; require them to disclose publicly all hazardous substances and proper techniques for managing them; establish meaningul and verifiable performance standards for manufacturers, such as specifying responsible management practices; and ensure that the recycling infrastructure promotes community economic development.
Information on New
Computer Purchasing Guidelines!
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Safe Playgrounds Project
In 2001, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) successfully filed suit against 31 manufacturers of outdoor playground equipment to stop their use of arsenic-treated wood. For this type of pressure-treated wood, chromated copper arsenate (CCA) is used as a preservative, exposing children to unsafe levels of the cancer-causing chemicals arsenic and chromium.
In 2003, thanks in large part to the sustained efforts of CEH and the Healthy Building Network, the industry agreed to stop the manufacture of arsenic-treated wood for residential uses by the end of the year.
As a follow-up to this success, CEH launched an outreach and information campaign called the Safe Playgrounds Project, in order to educate the public about how to minimize health threats to children from playgrounds where older equipment made with arsenic-treated wood is already present.
The Safe Playgrounds Project was created to provide information to California parks and recreation sites, school districts, teachers and parents groups, childcare centers and other agencies so that they are properly informed of the health risks arsenic-treated wood poses, and so that they may take the proper actions to minimize these risks. This project was made possible by funds received from the Public Health Trust, a project of the Public Health Institute.
Visit CEH's Safe Playgrounds Project web site for more information.
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