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- ATSDR works very closely with communities
across the country.
We try and understand what exposures are occurring
in those communities,
what health risks might be associated with those exposures
and ultimately, if we think those health risks
are unreasonable, what steps can be taken
to minimize those risks?
It's a public health agency that was established
to address community health concerns
about exposures to chemicals and other hazardous agents
in their environment.
- In the upcoming segments,
we're gonna have community members speak specifically
about work ATSDR is doing in their community
and how we work together to help them understand
the environmental health hazards
and the impact of environmental contamination
on their specific community.
And really how ATSDR partners with both local governments
and people in the community,
to help them understand the risk.
- My name's Rebecca Jim,
and I'm the executive director for LEAD Agency,
and that is Local Environmental Action Demanded.
I'm a member of the Cherokee Nation,
I live in the Cherokee reservation.
One of the reasons we formed LEAD Agency
was the fact that people kept wondering, why are we so sick?
So, we looked up all of the known toxins we had
and everything that our people could be exposed to.
And we used the ATSDR tox profiles.
Without at ATSDR's alerting EPA,
that we had a real problem here with too many children
being lead poisoned.
We would not be having the cleanup we're having.
We've got children now that can think clearly,
they can concentrate, they can have a future.
I think that's pretty important.
- My name is John Mellow.
I'm a resident of Lackawanna county, Pennsylvania.
Working with Pennsylvania Department
of Environmental Protection,
this landfill is one of the largest in Pennsylvania.
Those citizens are very concerned
about what kind of health effects
are going to be generated currently and in the future.
ATSDR has changed our area for the better,
because what it's done is it made some recommendations
for regulatory agency to actually collect additional data.
ATSDR with their partner, Pennsylvania Department of Health
has done a great job in helping out the community
in resolve some of the concerns.
- Hello, my name is Saúl Juárez Aguilar.
I am the manager at the Community Outreach Department
of ProHealth Care.
I became involved with ATSDR,
because we've heard that there was a toxic leakage
in our communities and this leakage was caused
by one of the old foundries here.
There was a spill that leaching to the soil
and the vapors reached out into community basements.
This was a collaboration between the ATSDR team,
the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and our staff
to reach out specifically to Spanish speaking neighbors
in our community.
There was a lot of information
that we were not familiar with,
and they were able to explain that information to us
in a very simplistic way.
For us as medical providers as education to us
and then also to kind of decode that information
so that we can put it in very simple words to our community
and deliver one single message that the families needed
to take action.
If it were not for ATSDR to facilitate this information
and to bring this information to them,
it would have caused probably some health issues
in the long run.
- I'm Stephanie Holm, I'm an environmental pediatrician.
I am the co-director of the Western States PEHSU.
The mission of the PEHSU is to improve dissemination
of information about the health of children
and how exposure to environmental toxicants
can affect kids' health.
The PEHSU partnership with ATSDR
has really allowed us to address really important gaps
in knowledge and in resources both for health professionals
and for families,
and really by addressing environmental concerns early
in a child's life, starting from preconception
all the way through childhood,
there's this really great potential
for improving quality of life both during childhood,
but really through the entire life course.
Each case addressed by the PEHSUs has the potential
to positively affect thousands of children and families.
And so, if you multiply that by all 10 PEHSUs
around the country, the impact is really incredible.
- Our vision is to be the most trusted agency
for communities in helping them understand the risk
and the hazards of environmental contamination
in their environment.
We really believe it's important that we connect
with the communities on a regular basis
in everything that we do so that we can work with them
as partners to help and at times can be very complicated
issues and help them understand the risk associated
with contamination in their environment.
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