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Natural Resources Defense Council, Children's Environmental Health Initiative

Gina Solomon, MD
Senior Scientist
71 Stevenson St.
San Francisco, CA 94105
Phone: (415) 777-0220
Fax: (415) 495-5996
URL: http://www.nrdc.org

Mission Statement

 
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), with 350,000 members nationwide, works to preserve the environment, protect the public health, and ensure the conservation of wilderness and natural resources. NRDC pursues its goals through research, advocacy, litigation and public education. Program areas include public health, resource conservation and stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

  • Geographic focus: national
  • Membership: 350,000 individuals
  • Other organizational activities (not directed specifically toward children): advocacy, grantmaking, policy analysis, public education, research

    • Children's Environmental Health Activities

    		 
    NRDC's Children's Environmental Health Initiative was launched in 1989 following the release of Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children's Food, a NRDC report that represented the first detailed analysis of children's exposure to pesticides in food and a determination of the potential hazards posed by these residues.

    The Children's Environmental Health Initiative successfully settled a series of lawsuits to protect children from lead poisoning, and it continues to play a leadership role in the fight to reduce lead exposures. NRDC's reports on specific environmental threats to children's health have aided in efforts to advocate reforms and educate key decision makers and the public about environmental risks to children's health. Handle with Care: Children and Environmental Carcinogens documented children's exposure to a host of carcinogens and the failure of government standards to adequately protect children.

    The goal of the Children's Environmental Health Initiative remains to safeguard the youngest segment of the population from environmental threats such as lead, pesticides and air pollution. This Initiative shares the over-arching goal of the NRDC's Public Health Program: to protect human health by reducing and whenever possible eliminating the use of toxic chemicals. We plan to release a paper identifying the worst environmental threats to children's health and recommending specific reforms, with chapters on lead, pesticides, air pollution, drinking water contamination and passive tobacco smoke.

    Please note: the information presented above was provided and reviewed for accuracy by Natural Resources Defense Council, Children's Environmental Health Initiative and was not verified independently by the Children's Environmental Health Network.
    Publication date: 5/5/99