Ending the Trespass of Toxic Chemicals in Our Bodies

Without our knowledge -- let alone our consent -- the petrochemical industry exposes us all to human-made, largely untested chemicals. Many thousands of them.

It’s a trespass on our bodies, we never authorized it, and it’s intentionally hidden from us.

None of this would be as insidious if its effects on us were biologically benign. They're not.

Science continues to prove that the chemical stew we swim in is changing who we are on the most fundamental biological levels. It affects our health, longevity, fertility, intelligence, behavior, and more. And it’s doing its worst harm to children, women, and communities of color.

Environmental health is the field where creative, deeply committed activists take on the world’s most powerful companies to end this reckless, greed-driven experiment on our health.

I was unaware of the scope of this experiment nor of its proven effects on us until a whip-smart, strategic band of environmental health champions introduced me to their work. Curiously, they also offered an executive leadership position to me -- a capital defense activist with a sum total of zero experience in their field. Their palpable commitment to environmental health and justice and their vision for our future won me over.

My new job was to help the team at the Center for Environmental Health win carefully chosen battles that protect children, families, and communities from toxic chemicals in our air, water, food, and consumer products. Over the next thirteen years, we:

• Required global retailers, distributors, and manufacturers to remove brain-damaging lead from hundreds of everyday children’s products, including in candy marketed to Latino children

• Forced the federal government to set its first-ever limit on lead in children’s products and protected that law from industries’ scorched-earth effort to water it down

• Directed legal settlement funds to environmental justice organizations led by and rooted in the communities of color that are disproportionately poisoned by toxic chemicals

• Led a nationwide coalition that eliminated brain-damaging, cancer-causing, flame-retardant chemicals from furniture

• Helped end fracking in New York state

• Protected commonsense federal, state, and local regulations from ongoing attacks by industries

• Stopped the tobacco industry from marketing highly addictive, cancer-causing e-cigarettes to youth

These and other game-changing, underdog victories happened only because of our team’s tireless work, dazzling creativity, and wholehearted commitment to our mission. Lacking such attributes, I considered it my job to help ensure our workplace remained worthy of their commitment. Together, we built an environment where professionalism, inclusion, team-mindedness, accountability, strategic rigor, and support thrived. This helped miracles happen.

My patient colleagues were always willing to humor my curiosity. They gave me the opportunity to participate in nearly everything they did, offering ongoing lessons in strategy, communications, coalitions, movement building, public policy, strategic litigation, leadership, management, fundraising, and the often-invisible work that keeps an organization healthy and effective.

When the time came for me to explore my next challenges, I left a strong organization that, I’m proud to say, continues to win impossible victories that protect your health and mine.

I'll always be grateful to the leadership, staff, board, allies, and supporters who came together to help CEH fulfill its urgent, health-focused, justice-driven mission.

(Addendum: five years after my departure, CEH's Board invited me to fill a stint as interim CEO. What an honor to be entrusted with responsibility for an institution that has made such a difference. What an opportunity to assume a role I soon learned can truly be known and understood only with experience. And what a privilege to pass this leadership along to a far more able leader and a new generation of health visionaries.)

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