Defend Our Health

Programs: Environmental health program: in 2017, we worked locally to spread awareness of arsenic in maine's well water and help drive solutions to allow all mainers to have safe water. Additionally, we worked to protect firefighters and families from unnecessary carcinogenic flame retardant chemicals, some of which have also been shown to negatively impact children's brain development. Nationally, we lead a coalition that made the presence in food of ortho-phthalates, a class of industrial plasticizing chemicals many of which have been shown to have endocrine disrupting activity, a topic of discussion. We have made significant strides in moving industry away from the use of ortho-phthalates in food contact material. We have also been carefully monitoring and calling attention to problems with epa's implementation of the hard-won chemical policy reforms signed into law in 2016.

sustainable economy program: in 2017, we continued to promote the manufacture of safer chemicals from renewable, sustainable, biobased material, to replace toxic chemicals derived from climate-destroying petroleum. Maine's forest resources, which include the highest percentage of sustainably harvested timber in the nation, are a prime potential feedstock for such endeavors, and provide opportunity to create much needed jobs and economic opportunities in rural maine. To help realize this vision, we have been generating the analyses for and finalizing a road map to the steps needed to put maine's underutilized forest resources to work creating sustainable, low-carbon biobased chemicals and other products.