Tuesday, July 6, 2010
California Budget Crunch Drives New Juvenile Justice Reforms—Like ‘Em or Not
California’s still dismal budget picture has persuaded Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to propose further changes in the state’s youth correctional system. Now, the Governor wants to lower the age of jurisdiction at the state’s Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). California is unique among states in that it permits youthful offenders to remain in rehabilitative programs at DJJ until age 25. The Governor is now asking the Legislature to drop the maximum DJJ custody age from 25 to 21. His goal: cut the DJJ population and save nearly $50 million per year in state funds. It is now costing the state about $225,000 per year to incarcerate a single youth in a DJJ facility.
Many youth advocates oppose the Governor’s age-reduction proposal. Why? Because it means that more youthful offenders will be sent to state prisons to serve the full adult term, instead of going to DJJ. In order to avoid a “short sentence” capped at age 21, prosecutors will file more eligible cases in adult court in order to get the longer adult prison sentence. Minors convicted as adults in California can be (and often are) sentenced to state prison for the full adult term.
How many youth would be sacrificed in this manner to the adult prison system? Based on a review of the available DJJ commitment data, Commonweal estimates that 50 to 60 youth per year would lose their access to DJJ and its rehabilitative programs under the Governor’s plan. The number would be even larger, but for the fact that prosecutors have already pushed more and more youth into the adult system over the last several years.
From the youth advocacy perspective, the Governor’s age reduction proposal is not all bad. First of all, limiting the DJJ population to those under 21 would transform the California system into a more traditional juvenile justice model, allowing programs to be tailored to a younger overall population. Lowering the age also means cutting the DJJ population by another 15 percent or so—a result that meets the “downsizing” goals espoused by DJJ reform advocates. Already, SB 81—the major California realignment law adopted in 2007—has removed non-violent youth from DJJ, dropping the population by about 40 percent from pre-2007 levels (to under 1500 by March 2010, down from about 2,500 in 2007). These benefits of capping DJJ jurisdiction at age 21 are, nevertheless, dismissed by a core of youth advocates who say that we should not force one single young person into state prison if that can be avoided.
So far, California lawmakers have not rushed to embrace the DJJ age change proposal. Cutting state corrections cost, including DJJ cost, remains a top legislative priority. Along these lines, legislative Budget Committees have already adopted the Governor’s cost savings target for DJJ (a $48 million cut), but without specifically endorsing the DJJ age cap. Some of the more liberal lawmakers do not want to terminate DJJ as an option for older youth. County stakeholders, too, are broadly skeptical of the proposal. Among their concerns: higher local cost due to more jury trials of juveniles in adult courts, if DJJ is capped at 21. If DJJ and legislative decision makers cannot find other ways to cut DJJ cost, the age change may wind up being adopted as the “lesser evil” among various cost cutting strategies. Final decisions on DJJ age will likely be made by June of this year, in time to be included in the state budget and budget trailer bills for FY 2010–11.
The Juvenile Justice Program is supported by grants from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, The California Endowment, the California Wellness Foundation, the van Loben Sels/RembeRock Foundation, and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
ISHI: Creating a Worldwide Community of Doctors Who Connect Through the Heart
Welcome page of ISHI's new Remembering the Heart of Medicine website for physicians (http://theheartofmedicine.org/)
ISHI’s long awaited new online community website for physicians, Remembering the Heart of Medicine (www.theheartofmedicine.org), launched this February. The website grew out of an ongoing long-term conversation between the many doctors who have attended ISHI’s programs over the past 20+ years, sharing with us their unmet needs, their dreams and hopes, their ongoing struggle to remain whole and committed to their work, their feeling of aloneness and their love of medicine. It is our hope that this website will offer any physician anywhere in the world an oasis of renewal where they can reconnect and remember the deep meaning of their work despite the stresses and pressures inherent in today’s health care system. As reported by a physician in a recent survey, “I go to the site when I need support, when I have had a particularly difficult period at work, when I need to remember why I am doing this.”
In consultation with hundreds of physicians, we have created a web environment that is interesting, innovative, interactive and healing. The site encourages self-discovery and personal reflection, promotes self-care, enables an in-depth multi-faceted exploration of the meaning of medicine and its lineage, and offers the opportunity for a genuine connection with other physicians worldwide. Website offerings include inspiring collections of poetry, art, stories and articles either about medicine or created by physicians; audio and visual recordings; guided meditations and other innovative and proven exercises for self-care; and nine discussion forums where doctors can connect with likeminded colleagues who are committed to practicing a medicine of human connection and compassionate healing. Ultimately, Remembering the Heart of Medicine offers physicians the opportunity to move beyond the divisiveness of their expertise and speak to each other physicians in new ways about what really matters, to offer one another the understanding and support that only one physician can offer another, and to share in the experience of belonging to a worldwide community of service.
The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness is supported by a generous grant from a foundation that prefers anonymity and many individual donors to whom we are very grateful.
Toxic Chemicals in Hollywood: The Toxies—Presented by Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy
Timed for Oscars week, Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy (CHANGE) hosted its own red carpet event March 3, 2010, at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles. The Toxies awards recognized "Bad Actor" chemicals, known for their dangers to human health and the environment.
Actors playing a "Dirty Dozen" chemicals arrived by limousine, curbside at the Egyptian, as surprised and delighted Hollywood tourists jostled for position to snap photos of an Oscars Week gala. Among the honorees were flame retardants, mercury, phthalates, formaldehyde, and perchlorate.
The rocket fuel Perchlorate-Toxies winner for Worst Special Effects
Special Toxies were given to the synthetic estrogen Bisphenol A for "Worst Breakthrough Performance;" and to lead for "Lifetime Achievement in Harm."
Speaking at the press conference following the awards ceremony was Dr. Sandra Aronberg, Environmental Health Ambassador with Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles. "We don’t get a 'second take' for our health. I have been biomonitored for chemicals in my body and discovered an alphabet soup of unwelcome industrial chemicals. Our bodies are becoming toxic dumps grounds," she said.
The toxic trio Formaldehyde, Toluene, and Dibutyl Phthalate, widely found in nail salons—Toxies winner for Worst Ensemble Performance
The event was produced to pressure California's nascent Green Chemistry Initiative, which is under development in Sacramento, to meet its promise of changing the current chemicals management paradigm. Currently only minimal information is required about chemicals, which are in essence assumed to be safe without sufficient scientific scrutiny.
"The Toxies highlight only a fraction of Bad Actor chemicals. We need a regulatory structure that can fast-track these high hazard chemicals and retire them quickly from commerce," said Davis Baltz of Commonweal.
See the whole story, complete with report and additional photos at http://changecalifornia.org/
Californians for a Healthy & Green Economy (CHANGE) is a state-wide coalition working to create a better system for regulating toxic chemicals in California. Commonweal is a founding member.
We are grateful to Health Care Without Harm, the Kresge Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, and an anonymous foundation for their support of chemical policy reform, greening the health care industry, and increasing the profile of biomonitoring and its contribution to public health.
Throwing a Better Party
by Michael Lerner
“If you want social change, throw a better party,” says my friend Rick Ingrasci. The New School is Commonweal’s way of throwing a better party. The topics are often serious. But the experience of getting together to explore great questions of nature, culture, and the inner life is just a whole lot of fun. Jacquie Mallegni is a brilliant coordinator of all the pieces of The New School.
On March 14 we attracted the West Marin farm and garden crowd with John Wick and Peggy Rathman who described the work on their ranch co-creating the Marin Carbon Project:
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not enough to reverse global warming: we must also reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The Marin Carbon Project is investigating the potential for specific land management practices to enhance sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide as organic matter in rangeland and agricultural soils in California.
On March 7, beloved Bolinas physician Sadja Greenwood, MD, MPH, gave a great presentation on evidence-based nutritional supplementation. Sadja and I both knew that any recommendations on supplements would be controversial, but we wanted to establish a starting place for a shared appraisal of a reasonable supplementation program. We also hoped to create recommendations that health practitioners in the Coastal Health Alliance, our West Marin community clinics, could share with their 6000 patients. (See Sadja’s recommendations.)
On January 31, Thomas Kirsch, MD, talked with us about Carl Jung’s The Red Book. Kirsch, a Jungian analyst married to another Jungian analyst, was himself born to two first generation Jungian analysts. He knew Jung as a child. He was president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the International Association of Analytical Psychology. He taught Jungian psychology at Stanford Medical Center for many years, and is the author of an acclaimed study, The Jungians. One of the most interesting facts to emerge from Kirsch’s work is the strong role of European Jewish Jungian analysts trained by Jung in making Jungian psychology a global movement—despite Jung’s well documented flirtations with Fascism.
Those are a handful of the events. We also continue to deepen our collection of telephone interviews. One stunning recent interview was with Colin Greer, Executive Director of The New World Foundation in New York. Greer is a polymath who combines exceptionally creative philanthropy with a simultaneous career as a playwright, poet, and essayist. We discussed his new play on Spinoza, the 17th century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher excommunicated by the Jewish community in Amsterdam who went on to become one of the founders of modern philosophical thought.
Because we are throwing a better party, The New School is outgrowing our Library, where we can seat about 60 people maximum. Listeners spill out onto the deck and into the hallway. So we are moving more events upstairs to the Commonweal Gallery and working hard to find funds to soundproof the room and install new lighting, new carpeting, and an elevator for better handicapped access.
You can download podcasts of all New School events on the Commonweal website (www.commonweal.org/ new-school/)—and sign up to receive podcasts and updates. We won’t abuse your email box. We always welcome contributions to The New School.
The New School is supported by grants from the Bet Lev Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Whitman Institute, as well as contributions from many individuals, for which we are profoundly grateful.
“If you want social change, throw a better party,” says my friend Rick Ingrasci. The New School is Commonweal’s way of throwing a better party. The topics are often serious. But the experience of getting together to explore great questions of nature, culture, and the inner life is just a whole lot of fun. Jacquie Mallegni is a brilliant coordinator of all the pieces of The New School.
On March 14 we attracted the West Marin farm and garden crowd with John Wick and Peggy Rathman who described the work on their ranch co-creating the Marin Carbon Project:
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not enough to reverse global warming: we must also reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The Marin Carbon Project is investigating the potential for specific land management practices to enhance sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide as organic matter in rangeland and agricultural soils in California.
On March 7, beloved Bolinas physician Sadja Greenwood, MD, MPH, gave a great presentation on evidence-based nutritional supplementation. Sadja and I both knew that any recommendations on supplements would be controversial, but we wanted to establish a starting place for a shared appraisal of a reasonable supplementation program. We also hoped to create recommendations that health practitioners in the Coastal Health Alliance, our West Marin community clinics, could share with their 6000 patients. (See Sadja’s recommendations.)
On January 31, Thomas Kirsch, MD, talked with us about Carl Jung’s The Red Book. Kirsch, a Jungian analyst married to another Jungian analyst, was himself born to two first generation Jungian analysts. He knew Jung as a child. He was president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the International Association of Analytical Psychology. He taught Jungian psychology at Stanford Medical Center for many years, and is the author of an acclaimed study, The Jungians. One of the most interesting facts to emerge from Kirsch’s work is the strong role of European Jewish Jungian analysts trained by Jung in making Jungian psychology a global movement—despite Jung’s well documented flirtations with Fascism.
Those are a handful of the events. We also continue to deepen our collection of telephone interviews. One stunning recent interview was with Colin Greer, Executive Director of The New World Foundation in New York. Greer is a polymath who combines exceptionally creative philanthropy with a simultaneous career as a playwright, poet, and essayist. We discussed his new play on Spinoza, the 17th century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher excommunicated by the Jewish community in Amsterdam who went on to become one of the founders of modern philosophical thought.
Because we are throwing a better party, The New School is outgrowing our Library, where we can seat about 60 people maximum. Listeners spill out onto the deck and into the hallway. So we are moving more events upstairs to the Commonweal Gallery and working hard to find funds to soundproof the room and install new lighting, new carpeting, and an elevator for better handicapped access.
You can download podcasts of all New School events on the Commonweal website (www.commonweal.org/ new-school/)—and sign up to receive podcasts and updates. We won’t abuse your email box. We always welcome contributions to The New School.
The New School is supported by grants from the Bet Lev Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Whitman Institute, as well as contributions from many individuals, for which we are profoundly grateful.
Love and Will: A Healing in the Cancer Help Program
by Michael Lerner
We sat in a circle in front of the fireplace at Pacific House our retreat center overlooking the Pacific at Commonweal. Forty alumni and staff of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program gathered in the sacred Easter Passover week for a CCHP Alumni Day. A white candle in a small cup burned at the center of the circle.
Commonweal Executive Director Susan Braun asked each of us to bring two objects to the circle. One would be symbolic of the challenge of this time in our lives. The other would be symbolic of the gift of this time.
One by one, we placed our two objects in the circle. We spoke, as we placed each object, of our challenge and our gift. Simple questions. Responses came from deep within us. Words spoken into a candle-lit circle resonated with memories of weeks together in the Cancer Help Program.
I wish I could tell you what others said. Stories of anguish, of hope, of loss, of courage, of gratitude. Stories of loves found and lost, of friends found and lost, of surgeries and chemotherapies, of being buoyed up by prayers, of children, of a new puppy. Circles of trust are confidential. I cannot say more.
I can tell you what I said. Or at least what I meant.
The gift in my life is the infinite preciousness of each day. Our Havanese puppy Rafi licking our faces when he decides it is time to get up. Early morning sun warming my face as I stand on the porch. Biking to work through birdsong and foxes. The beloved community of our work. Simple dinners, sharing stories of our days. And reading, often into early hours of the morning, those whose voices speak to us across the ages.
Then I spoke of the challenge in my life. For many years, I said, I have often experienced an acute sense of contradiction between love and will in my life. It is a conflict between how I feel in many situations and what I am called to do. The conflict goes back to college years. I wrote a poem then that started Must I give up love to act? Is to feel what you exact? That question has remained, quiescent at times, then insistent again. I have experienced this conflict as a barrier to a deeper wholeness in me.
Speaking of this conflict was not easy. I was taking a risk. But there was something in me that wanted to confess to this ancient struggle in my life. Others in the circle were taking risks. So would I.
When we had each said our piece, Susan Braun, who was conducting the circle, asked us to take one of our objects back out of the circle, hold it in our hands, and reflect on what it meant to us. Then she asked us to hand our object to the person on our left, and to receive our neighbor’s object from the person on our right. Slowly, our objects, symbolically charged with our greatest hopes and fears, passed through the hands of each person in the circle. When they came back to us, our objects were hallowed with the loving energy of the whole circle. We had been heard, and felt, and seen by each other. And we had wished each other well.
Weeks passed. Then one day in my study, reading a sacred text, I had an experience. The experience was that this book had fallen into my heart. I could see the book in my heart. It was a small golden volume opened to a middle page. A sense of peace and clarity flooded through me. Within minutes, I noticed something. Though I had not been thinking of my old conflict of love and will at all, it came to me that the conflict had resolved. A healing had mysteriously taken place.
In the days that followed, I sensed that something had opened within me. Surely I would again face times when the claims of love and will would resurface. But I was, somehow, no longer stuck in inner anguish over the tension between compassion and action. If I could remember to act with a wise heart, I thought, I would be doing the best I could.
I cannot know how this healing took place in me. I know in the Cancer Help Program that when we share our deepest wounds, they often begin to transform—and sometimes even to heal. Is it simply, as is often thought, that speaking our truth into a circle of trust causes the healing? I have no doubt that is sufficient in itself. But I wonder—may it not also be that the love and prayers with which we are received also actively contribute to the healing?
This conflict of love and will is not mine alone. Truth be told, it permeates many of our lives. How many of us struggle with the competing demands of family and work? How many of us, balancing work and family, give short shrift to the equally urgent question of our true purpose in life—and who we really are?
Existential psychologist Rollo May wrote, in Love and Will, “the striking thing about love and will in our time is that, whereas in the past they were always held up to us as the answer to life’s predicaments, they have now themselves become the problem.” May saw our failure to understand the relationship between love and will as the heart of our present dilemma.
The great Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli saw love and will, along with creativity and wisdom, as cornerstones of his transpersonal psychology—called Psychosynthesis. Assagioli noted that people with a preponderance of will in their personalities are often deficient in the expression of love, while those in whom love predominates are often deficient in the development of will. Wisdom is finding the right relationship between the two.
In truth, the conflict between love and will goes back to the beginning of human history. Arjuna felt it in the Bhagavad Gita as he stood in his chariot on the battlefield facing friends and family. He did not want to fight and kill those he admired and loved. Krishna had to explain to him why it was necessary. Krishna’s explanation became one of the greatest sacred texts of all time.
As for the sacred book that sank into my heart—naming it would be a disservice to this story. Many sacred books have nourished my heart through the years—the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Bible, the Dao Te Ching, to name a few. Leibnitz and Aldous Huxley called the universal teachings within all the great traditions the perennial philosophy. My experience was that the book that dropped into my heart contained them all. You may have a book that you carry in your heart. If you do, know that was the book that dropped into mine.
I have been through these mountain top experiences before. I know they often fade. To serve life you may have to turn your back on the light and walk back down into the valley. Our acts, rather than a mountain high, define who we are. But the teachings we carry in our heart guide our hands and feet. How powerfully the teachings remain in our hearts—and how we conduct ourselves in the dark times when we feel abandoned by the light—these are the great questions of the inner life. Yet I sense that each time we go to the mountain, some residue of the light we experience there clings to us. We change in lasting ways, even if the numinous power of that moment fades. When the light returns, we can welcome it back, the sign of the peace of the spirit.
This is why I love the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. I have met most of my teachers in a circle of trust with a candle burning bright in the center.
The Cancer Help Program is supported by generous grants from the Kresge Foundation, the Morning Glory Family Foundation, and an extraordinary number of individual contributions from Cancer Help Program alumni and other Commonweal friends.
We sat in a circle in front of the fireplace at Pacific House our retreat center overlooking the Pacific at Commonweal. Forty alumni and staff of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program gathered in the sacred Easter Passover week for a CCHP Alumni Day. A white candle in a small cup burned at the center of the circle.
Commonweal Executive Director Susan Braun asked each of us to bring two objects to the circle. One would be symbolic of the challenge of this time in our lives. The other would be symbolic of the gift of this time.
One by one, we placed our two objects in the circle. We spoke, as we placed each object, of our challenge and our gift. Simple questions. Responses came from deep within us. Words spoken into a candle-lit circle resonated with memories of weeks together in the Cancer Help Program.
I wish I could tell you what others said. Stories of anguish, of hope, of loss, of courage, of gratitude. Stories of loves found and lost, of friends found and lost, of surgeries and chemotherapies, of being buoyed up by prayers, of children, of a new puppy. Circles of trust are confidential. I cannot say more.
I can tell you what I said. Or at least what I meant.
The gift in my life is the infinite preciousness of each day. Our Havanese puppy Rafi licking our faces when he decides it is time to get up. Early morning sun warming my face as I stand on the porch. Biking to work through birdsong and foxes. The beloved community of our work. Simple dinners, sharing stories of our days. And reading, often into early hours of the morning, those whose voices speak to us across the ages.
Then I spoke of the challenge in my life. For many years, I said, I have often experienced an acute sense of contradiction between love and will in my life. It is a conflict between how I feel in many situations and what I am called to do. The conflict goes back to college years. I wrote a poem then that started Must I give up love to act? Is to feel what you exact? That question has remained, quiescent at times, then insistent again. I have experienced this conflict as a barrier to a deeper wholeness in me.
Speaking of this conflict was not easy. I was taking a risk. But there was something in me that wanted to confess to this ancient struggle in my life. Others in the circle were taking risks. So would I.
When we had each said our piece, Susan Braun, who was conducting the circle, asked us to take one of our objects back out of the circle, hold it in our hands, and reflect on what it meant to us. Then she asked us to hand our object to the person on our left, and to receive our neighbor’s object from the person on our right. Slowly, our objects, symbolically charged with our greatest hopes and fears, passed through the hands of each person in the circle. When they came back to us, our objects were hallowed with the loving energy of the whole circle. We had been heard, and felt, and seen by each other. And we had wished each other well.
Weeks passed. Then one day in my study, reading a sacred text, I had an experience. The experience was that this book had fallen into my heart. I could see the book in my heart. It was a small golden volume opened to a middle page. A sense of peace and clarity flooded through me. Within minutes, I noticed something. Though I had not been thinking of my old conflict of love and will at all, it came to me that the conflict had resolved. A healing had mysteriously taken place.
In the days that followed, I sensed that something had opened within me. Surely I would again face times when the claims of love and will would resurface. But I was, somehow, no longer stuck in inner anguish over the tension between compassion and action. If I could remember to act with a wise heart, I thought, I would be doing the best I could.
I cannot know how this healing took place in me. I know in the Cancer Help Program that when we share our deepest wounds, they often begin to transform—and sometimes even to heal. Is it simply, as is often thought, that speaking our truth into a circle of trust causes the healing? I have no doubt that is sufficient in itself. But I wonder—may it not also be that the love and prayers with which we are received also actively contribute to the healing?
This conflict of love and will is not mine alone. Truth be told, it permeates many of our lives. How many of us struggle with the competing demands of family and work? How many of us, balancing work and family, give short shrift to the equally urgent question of our true purpose in life—and who we really are?
Existential psychologist Rollo May wrote, in Love and Will, “the striking thing about love and will in our time is that, whereas in the past they were always held up to us as the answer to life’s predicaments, they have now themselves become the problem.” May saw our failure to understand the relationship between love and will as the heart of our present dilemma.
The great Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli saw love and will, along with creativity and wisdom, as cornerstones of his transpersonal psychology—called Psychosynthesis. Assagioli noted that people with a preponderance of will in their personalities are often deficient in the expression of love, while those in whom love predominates are often deficient in the development of will. Wisdom is finding the right relationship between the two.
In truth, the conflict between love and will goes back to the beginning of human history. Arjuna felt it in the Bhagavad Gita as he stood in his chariot on the battlefield facing friends and family. He did not want to fight and kill those he admired and loved. Krishna had to explain to him why it was necessary. Krishna’s explanation became one of the greatest sacred texts of all time.
As for the sacred book that sank into my heart—naming it would be a disservice to this story. Many sacred books have nourished my heart through the years—the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Bible, the Dao Te Ching, to name a few. Leibnitz and Aldous Huxley called the universal teachings within all the great traditions the perennial philosophy. My experience was that the book that dropped into my heart contained them all. You may have a book that you carry in your heart. If you do, know that was the book that dropped into mine.
I have been through these mountain top experiences before. I know they often fade. To serve life you may have to turn your back on the light and walk back down into the valley. Our acts, rather than a mountain high, define who we are. But the teachings we carry in our heart guide our hands and feet. How powerfully the teachings remain in our hearts—and how we conduct ourselves in the dark times when we feel abandoned by the light—these are the great questions of the inner life. Yet I sense that each time we go to the mountain, some residue of the light we experience there clings to us. We change in lasting ways, even if the numinous power of that moment fades. When the light returns, we can welcome it back, the sign of the peace of the spirit.
This is why I love the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. I have met most of my teachers in a circle of trust with a candle burning bright in the center.
The Cancer Help Program is supported by generous grants from the Kresge Foundation, the Morning Glory Family Foundation, and an extraordinary number of individual contributions from Cancer Help Program alumni and other Commonweal friends.
The Collaborative on Health and the Environment
by Elise Miller, Director
“I happen to be a believer in the Precautionary Principle used appropriately, which I think really goes with the CHE definition…when you have a decent amount of (scientific) information that suggests that there may be harm, you don’t wait for certainty before action.”
This was not said by a seasoned environmental health activist nor one of CHE’s core advisors. Instead, this cogent comment was made on a CHE national partner call in March by Linda Birnbaum, PhD, MS, the highly respected Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Birnbaum has received numerous awards for her scientific research and is the author of more than 700 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, abstracts, and reports. On that same call, she underscored health concerns associated with endocrine disrupting chemicals and cumulative impacts. She also praised CHE for translating the emerging environmental health science for diverse constituencies.
In short, Dr. Birnbaum’s statements on this CHE call captured the extraordinary shift we are seeing in the thinking and actions of some people at the highest levels of government. Twenty-first century environmental health science is being taken more seriously than ever in circles that only a few years ago would have ignored or downplayed the significance of this research. And without doubt, CHE partners have played a role in making that happen.
For example, leading CHE partners reached influential audiences with the publication of a major national biomonitoring report, Mind, Disrupted: How Toxic Chemicals May Affect How We Think and Who We Are. This report was released in conjunction with a Senate hearing on chemical policy reform in February. The New York Times, Forbes, and over 20 other media outlets picked it up (see: www.disabilityandenvironment. org). The Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI), one of CHE’s major working groups, partnered with the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center (CBRC) and leading national environmental health organiza¬tions to undertake this study.
For more details about Mind, Disrupted, follow this link: http://www.minddisrupted.org/index.php
CHE partners also recently weighed in on the obesity epidemic. In a letter drafted by CHE to First Lady Michelle Obama, a dozen prominent researchers and health professionals expressed their appreciation for Mrs. Obama’s leadership on reducing the prevalence of obesity and underscored the need to address more systemic factors beyond lifestyle changes that emerging science suggests contribute to obesity, including exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals known as “obesogens.”
Other CHE working groups have been very active, including members of CHE Cancer, who are preparing to respond to the release of the President’s Cancer Panel report on environmental contributors to cancer later this spring. The Electromagnetic Field (EMF) working group has had robust listserv exchanges as more and more science on the impacts of EMFs on health emerges.
The Mental Health working group published two new downloadable resources (see: http://www.healthandenvironment. org/working_groups/mh) regarding associations between pesticide exposures and mental health disorders. CHE has also launched a new working group on autism and is helping develop the agenda for a science symposium on environmental contributors to autism that will dovetail with the Autism Society of America’s annual meeting in July.
Also of note, CHE’s Initiative on Children’s Environmental Health is organizing a one-day symposium on pediatric integrative health with the Whole Child Center and University of California, San Francisco. The conference will feature notable speakers from a wide range of fields relevant to children’s health. It will be held on October 1, to coincide with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in San Francisco.
More behind the scenes, but no less significant, has been an overhaul of the CHE Fertility and Reproductive Health working group online library. This effort has made hundreds of articles and other resources more accessible and searchable (see: http:// www.healthandenvironment.org/ working_groups/fertility). Much of the CHE website has been updated, and CHE has just launched a blog and a Facebook page (visit: http://www. healthandenvironment.org and click on those new features).
I will end by noting that, in addition to these specific actions, core advisors and staff of CHE continue to wrestle with some deeper questions about enhancing and sustaining human and ecological health. Perhaps one question that is most often at the heart of our discussions is how to best articulate a systems model of health—one that includes a range of interacting factors impacting health over the human lifespan—so that we can implement more effective, upstream interventions and improve the resiliency of current and future generations. With our plans to look more carefully at cumulative impacts on health, climate change, and healthy aging, we hope to uncover more clues that will help us address that question and many others.
The Collaborative on Health and the Environment is grateful for generous support from Cedar Tree Foundation, Community Funds, Inc, John Merck Fund, The Johnson Family Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Passport Foundation, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, Wallace Genetic Foundation, an anonymous foundation, and individual donors.
“I happen to be a believer in the Precautionary Principle used appropriately, which I think really goes with the CHE definition…when you have a decent amount of (scientific) information that suggests that there may be harm, you don’t wait for certainty before action.”
This was not said by a seasoned environmental health activist nor one of CHE’s core advisors. Instead, this cogent comment was made on a CHE national partner call in March by Linda Birnbaum, PhD, MS, the highly respected Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Birnbaum has received numerous awards for her scientific research and is the author of more than 700 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, abstracts, and reports. On that same call, she underscored health concerns associated with endocrine disrupting chemicals and cumulative impacts. She also praised CHE for translating the emerging environmental health science for diverse constituencies.
In short, Dr. Birnbaum’s statements on this CHE call captured the extraordinary shift we are seeing in the thinking and actions of some people at the highest levels of government. Twenty-first century environmental health science is being taken more seriously than ever in circles that only a few years ago would have ignored or downplayed the significance of this research. And without doubt, CHE partners have played a role in making that happen.
For example, leading CHE partners reached influential audiences with the publication of a major national biomonitoring report, Mind, Disrupted: How Toxic Chemicals May Affect How We Think and Who We Are. This report was released in conjunction with a Senate hearing on chemical policy reform in February. The New York Times, Forbes, and over 20 other media outlets picked it up (see: www.disabilityandenvironment. org). The Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI), one of CHE’s major working groups, partnered with the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center (CBRC) and leading national environmental health organiza¬tions to undertake this study.
For more details about Mind, Disrupted, follow this link: http://www.minddisrupted.org/index.php
CHE partners also recently weighed in on the obesity epidemic. In a letter drafted by CHE to First Lady Michelle Obama, a dozen prominent researchers and health professionals expressed their appreciation for Mrs. Obama’s leadership on reducing the prevalence of obesity and underscored the need to address more systemic factors beyond lifestyle changes that emerging science suggests contribute to obesity, including exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals known as “obesogens.”
Other CHE working groups have been very active, including members of CHE Cancer, who are preparing to respond to the release of the President’s Cancer Panel report on environmental contributors to cancer later this spring. The Electromagnetic Field (EMF) working group has had robust listserv exchanges as more and more science on the impacts of EMFs on health emerges.
The Mental Health working group published two new downloadable resources (see: http://www.healthandenvironment. org/working_groups/mh) regarding associations between pesticide exposures and mental health disorders. CHE has also launched a new working group on autism and is helping develop the agenda for a science symposium on environmental contributors to autism that will dovetail with the Autism Society of America’s annual meeting in July.
Also of note, CHE’s Initiative on Children’s Environmental Health is organizing a one-day symposium on pediatric integrative health with the Whole Child Center and University of California, San Francisco. The conference will feature notable speakers from a wide range of fields relevant to children’s health. It will be held on October 1, to coincide with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in San Francisco.
More behind the scenes, but no less significant, has been an overhaul of the CHE Fertility and Reproductive Health working group online library. This effort has made hundreds of articles and other resources more accessible and searchable (see: http:// www.healthandenvironment.org/ working_groups/fertility). Much of the CHE website has been updated, and CHE has just launched a blog and a Facebook page (visit: http://www. healthandenvironment.org and click on those new features).
I will end by noting that, in addition to these specific actions, core advisors and staff of CHE continue to wrestle with some deeper questions about enhancing and sustaining human and ecological health. Perhaps one question that is most often at the heart of our discussions is how to best articulate a systems model of health—one that includes a range of interacting factors impacting health over the human lifespan—so that we can implement more effective, upstream interventions and improve the resiliency of current and future generations. With our plans to look more carefully at cumulative impacts on health, climate change, and healthy aging, we hope to uncover more clues that will help us address that question and many others.
The Collaborative on Health and the Environment is grateful for generous support from Cedar Tree Foundation, Community Funds, Inc, John Merck Fund, The Johnson Family Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Passport Foundation, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, Wallace Genetic Foundation, an anonymous foundation, and individual donors.
Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center: Earliest Exposures Project
by Sharyle Patton, Director
“Something is wrong when I, as an educated consumer, am unable to protect my baby from toxic chemicals. I and all other parents should be able to walk into stores and buy what we need without winding up with products that put our families’ health at risk.”
Dr. Molly Gray made this statement at the February 4th Congressional hearing sponsored by Sen. Lautenberg who, following the testimonies of panelists, announced his intention to introduce a bill reforming the nation’s toxic chemical law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Molly, a first time mother, had been biomonitored during her second trimester along with eight other new moms from California, Oregon, and Washington for the presence of toxic chemicals. The Earliest Exposures biomonitoring project, coordinated by the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, Washington State Toxics Coalition, and the Toxics Free Legacy Coalition, conducted the testing.
Like all the moms in the project, Molly was careful during her pregnancy to avoid exposures to chemicals that have the potential to cause harm to her developing fetus. And like all the moms in the project, Molly was surprised to find that her body contained bisphenol A, the hormone disrupting chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic and the lining for food cans; “Teflon chemicals,” or perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), chemicals used to create stain-protection products and non-stick cookware; and phthalates, the plasticizers and fragrance carriers found in consumer products from shower curtains to shampoo.
Molly’s words of concern as a participant in the Earliest Exposures biomonitoring project places a very personal story alongside the Center for Disease Control’s statistics that indicate levels of toxic chemicals in women of childbearing age in the US population. Her story as an individual who has been biomonitored and who has chosen to speak about her results reverberated throughout the Lautenberg hearing, driving home deep concerns about the unnecessary contamination of all our bodies and the critical need for safer chemicals and better policies. For more information about the project and the campaign to reform TSCA, Earliest Exposures can be found at http://watoxics.org/%20and%20www.saferchemicals.org
The projects of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center have been made possible by generous funding from the John Merck Fund, the Kresge Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and an anonymous foundation.
Dr. Molly Gray, a participant in the Earliest Exposures biomonitoring project, testified before Congress about her experience of being biomonitored. Her testimony, and those of other biomonitoring participants, was influential in a bill being proposed to reform national toxics chemical law.
“Something is wrong when I, as an educated consumer, am unable to protect my baby from toxic chemicals. I and all other parents should be able to walk into stores and buy what we need without winding up with products that put our families’ health at risk.”
Dr. Molly Gray made this statement at the February 4th Congressional hearing sponsored by Sen. Lautenberg who, following the testimonies of panelists, announced his intention to introduce a bill reforming the nation’s toxic chemical law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Molly, a first time mother, had been biomonitored during her second trimester along with eight other new moms from California, Oregon, and Washington for the presence of toxic chemicals. The Earliest Exposures biomonitoring project, coordinated by the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, Washington State Toxics Coalition, and the Toxics Free Legacy Coalition, conducted the testing.
Like all the moms in the project, Molly was careful during her pregnancy to avoid exposures to chemicals that have the potential to cause harm to her developing fetus. And like all the moms in the project, Molly was surprised to find that her body contained bisphenol A, the hormone disrupting chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic and the lining for food cans; “Teflon chemicals,” or perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), chemicals used to create stain-protection products and non-stick cookware; and phthalates, the plasticizers and fragrance carriers found in consumer products from shower curtains to shampoo.
Molly’s words of concern as a participant in the Earliest Exposures biomonitoring project places a very personal story alongside the Center for Disease Control’s statistics that indicate levels of toxic chemicals in women of childbearing age in the US population. Her story as an individual who has been biomonitored and who has chosen to speak about her results reverberated throughout the Lautenberg hearing, driving home deep concerns about the unnecessary contamination of all our bodies and the critical need for safer chemicals and better policies. For more information about the project and the campaign to reform TSCA, Earliest Exposures can be found at http://watoxics.org/%20and%20www.saferchemicals.org
The projects of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center have been made possible by generous funding from the John Merck Fund, the Kresge Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and an anonymous foundation.
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