Roadmap to Environmental Health

Executive Summary

Everyone needs a healthy environment in order to thrive. After recognizing (often, too slowly) the harm human activity has on the planet and human health, leaders have created government infrastructure to phase out toxic chemicals and address our legacy of pollution. Some businesses have also led the way, at times based on the interests of their founders or leaders, or often due to advocacy and pressure from customers and public interest organizations.

The Problems

We now know that chemicals that make up common household products can have profound, often lifelong, impacts – contributing to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, infertility, birth defects and other health problems for people, poisoning waters for aquatic life, and warming the planet’s atmosphere.

We live on a finite, fragile planet. We recognize that change is necessary to ensure a sustainable future for our children, grandchildren, and all life on the planet.  We need to transition from the linear model of resource use: extraction, transportation, manufacturing, transportation, use, transportation, and disposal as waste. In this Roadmap, we share a new vision for meeting our needs – a rapid transition to a nontoxic, sustainable, and socially just circular economy. Without a switch to nontoxic materials, even with a circular economy, we will continue spreading chemicals that harm human health and the environment. Without a recognition that our transportation and energy systems must not contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, our climate will further destabilize and none of our efforts will be sustainable. Without ensuring that all people are valued and protected from harm and allowed to thrive, any economy will ultimately destabilize as those it harms and diminishes, resist it. Without the fundamental shift to treating all materials as future inputs, rather than ultimate wastes, we will exhaust our resources.  

We Need New York's Leadership

Although federal laws already enacted represent real progress to protect workers, people, communities, and the environment, special interests often weakened them or prevented their full implementation. In the current administration, industry representatives are not just lobbying from the outside, they have been appointed to major leadership positions within key agencies, resulting in repeated rollback efforts. Here are some prime examples:

Exceptions: Due to our dependence on them fossil fuels are treated differently from other toxic chemicals, even though they pose significant toxicological threats. For example, natural gas production wastes are exempted from handling under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Burden of Proof: Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency must prove to a very high bar that chemicals already in commerce are harmful. Even when there was credible scientific evidence, EPA had to demonstrate that the harm outweighed the economic benefit to the industry in question for its use. EPA was unable to ban asbestos for those reasons.

The Risk Paradigm: Under the current risk-based construct ensconced in federal law, for which leading chemical makers and trade associations lobby intensely, each use of a chemical is assessed to establish the amount of a chemical that poses an acceptable risk of harm. This is hard and expensive to do, as there are many variables regarding chemicals and their toxicity, and how and when a person might inhale, ingest, or absorb them. This allows ongoing production of known harmful chemicals.

The Landscape

The federal government has enacted major legislation to address the consequences of harmful chemicals in our economy. Due to public pressure, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, programs to clean up hazardous waste sites and other environmental protection laws, had lofty goals, some of which were realized, and some of which were not. In its four years in office, the Trump Administration rolled back nearly 100 environmental protections of air, water, and land, though some were stopped in the courts due to state and public interest organizations’ actions. The federal government also has now-outdated laws and regulations addressing chemicals in food, drugs, and cosmetics.

New York State has enacted laws that implement or go beyond federal laws to address environmental and public health concerns. The State has invested in broader toxic waste cleanup efforts through several programs, not just the federal Superfund. It has enacted restrictions on chemicals of concern, often as the first or among the first states to do so. It has created and resourced the Environmental Protection Fund and expanded funding within it for Environmental Health and Justice. Some of these laws are not fully implemented to ensure a clean and healthy environment for all, and there is opportunity to do more. The State invests heavily in the “innovation economy” and can play a greater role in integrating forward-thinking green chemistry and engineering into those innovations.

New York’s businesses have resources to help them change current processes or develop new, creative solutions. The State allows company to incorporate as “benefit corporations” – folding social and environmental considerations alongside profit as primary goals of the corporation, and more companies are taking advantage of thatdesignation. Companies can turn to the Pollution Prevention Institute for support of different projects that solve the problems driving pollution, rather than simply address end-of-pipe cleanup.

We have a robust community of academic institutions that conduct research into safer materials and chemistry, and who teach students how to consider those factors. From Long Island to Buffalo, they offer research and innovation, strengthening our state’s ability to lead the way on environmental health. Still, there is room to grow, and it will be worth engaging schools across the state to incorporate toxicology and alternatives assessment capacity in their curriculum for all students, not just those with a specific interest.

Solutions to problems that face us concerning recycling, plastic pollution of the oceans, and harmful chemicals in our bodies arrive at one conclusion: we need to fundamentally shift our approach.

In this Roadmap, we will always concentrate on driving toward a nontoxic, sustainable, socially just, circular economy. In a circular economy, we will stop introducing chemicals that harm human health and the environment and switch to nontoxic materials, ensuring all people are valued and protected from harm and allowed to thrive. The fundamental shift to treating all materials as future inputs, not simply as ultimate wastes, will preserve our irreplaceable resources.

The Four Major Roads to Environmental Health Leadership

Key State Policy Actions

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Roadmap Endorsers

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Endorse the Roadmap

In endorsing the Roadmap, signatories express support for the four "major roads to environmental health leadership" and key policy actions in the executive summary. You will be listed publicly as an official Roadmap Endorser. We will keep you updated via email on opportunities to engage.

Please add my organization to the endorsers of the Roadmap: