Indigenous Environmental Network

Toxics and Enviromental Health

For More Information, scroll down the page and view the videos we've provided for you.

What Our Toxics and Environmental
Health Campaign Is

Our IEN Toxics and Environmental Health initiative is part of a coalition of Native and non-Native health professionals, health-affected groups, environmental and environmental justice organizations, and others dedicated to a safe and less toxic world for Native children and Native communities and Native Nations.

Our Program Mission

Through education, outreach, advocacy, and base-building initiatives we seek to protect Native children and Native Nations from adverse impacts caused by exposure to widespread hazardous chemicals and heavy metals.

What We Do

Advocate with Native Nations and communities for policy changes to reduce threats to children’s health.

Educate Native health professionals, Native traditional and spiritual practitioners, Native governmental leadership, women, elders and youth programs and the general Native grassroots membership.

Provide a voice and face to the issues of disproportionate impact and disparities in environmental and public health policies concerning Native/Indigenous Peoples at the local, state/provincial, federal and international levels.

Through coalition building, build a case for broad reform of chemicals regulation to protect Native and non-Native children.

Act as a Tribal Watchdog on the toxic polluting industry building polluting facilities on and near Native lands.

2008-2009 Campaigns

Protect children’s health by urging State/Provincial/Federal legislators to:

Restrict the manufacture and sale of products containing toxic Flame Retardant or Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs).

Phase out pharmaceutical use of the chemical ingredient Lindane in lice and scabies treatments.

Phase out mercury-containing products and align State/Provincial/Tribal/First Nations purchasing with a mercury-free goal.

Phase out of Phthalates and Bisphenol A from children's products, given that children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of these chemicals and safer alternatives are available.

Encourage major companies to phase out their use of PVC (polyvinyl chloride plastic) and to support policies that phase out PVC and Dioxin.

Create incentives and authority to promote safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals in consumer products intended for children.

Ban the addition of Lead to children’s products by adopting the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended threshold of 40 parts per million.

Protect Native Nations human and environmental health by:

Act as an advocate for the recognition of American Indian/Alaska Native/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples treaty rights, sovereignty and self-determination in the protection of the human and ecological health of our Native Nations and ecosystems.

Through the IEN Mining Program, act as an advocate for holding the mining industry and federal regulators responsible for releases of toxic pollution and for cleanup of contaminated sites. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ranks the mining industry as the nation's top toxic polluter, releasing cyanide, lead, arsenic, and mercury.

Act as a Tribal Watchdog on the industry building polluting facilities on and near Native lands, to include, but not limited to refineries, coal fired power plants, landfills, incinerators, waste-to-energy burners, new “incinerators-in-disguise” technologies, i.e. pyrolysis, gasification and plasma arc.

2008-2009 Campaign within the International Arena:

Participate within a global network of Indigenous and non-Indigenous public interest non-governmental organizations (International POPs Elimination Network-IPEN) and United Nations forums (UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, UN Commission on Sustainable Development, UN Environmental Programme, World and Regional Social Forums, World Water Forums) working together for the elimination of persistent organic pollutants, on an expedited yet socially equitable basis.

The goal for this international work is to bring our local Indigenous/Native issues of environmental health as a human rights issue towards achieving a world in which all chemicals are produced and used in ways that eliminate significant adverse effects on human health and the environment, and where persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and chemicals of equivalent concern (mercury, heavy metals, etc.) no longer pollute our local and global environments, and no longer contaminate our communities, our food, our bodies, or the bodies of our children and future generations.

FYI Videos :

The following video clips help to illustrate various environmental justice issues. We will be archiving these and adding new ones as time goes on.