The Collaborative on Health and the Environment's (CHE's) primary mission is to strengthen the science dialogue on environmental factors impacting human health and to facilitate collaborative efforts to address environmental health concerns. Founded in 2002, CHE is an international partnership of over 3,500 individuals and organizations in 45 countries and 48 states, including scientists, health professionals, health-affected groups, nongovernmental organizations and other concerned citizens, committed to improving human and ecological health.

New biomonitoring study release and Senate Hearing - Feb 4th

Read more, including how to listen to the live audio streaming from the hearing

New Working Group: CHE Autism

1/13/10: CHE is initiating CHE-Autism, a Working Group dedicated to exploring the new paradigm of autism research and treatment in Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Martha Herbert and Robert Hendren have agreed to serve as Science Advisers to CHE Autism. Michael Lerner will facilitate initially with his colleague Sheila Opperman, who has been involved with autism work for years.

To join CHE Autism contact: info@healthandenvironment.org

More information on the CHE Autism Working Group please visit: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/working_groups/autism_group

New Health Care Resource: Links between Pesticide Exposures and Mental Health

1/20/10: CHE Mental Health and the Environment Working Group has published a new resource examining the links between pesticide exposures and mental health.

Read more and download the PDF


2/2/10: In addition to the above resource, the Mental Health and the Environment Working Group has published a tri-fold brochure: Mental Health Effects Arising from Pesticide Exposure: A Guide for Healthcare Providers and Mental Health Pracitioners

Read more and download the brochure

Read past articles.

In memory of Rita Arditti - Remembering an inspiring cancer activist

by Dick Clapp and Genevieve Howe

The women’s movement and the environmental movement lost a champion on Christmas Day, 2009. Rita Arditti of Cambridge, MA died, at age 75, after a phenomenally productive and inspiring life and a decades-long battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was born in Argentina and educated in Italy as a biologist, which led to doing research and teaching at Brandeis, Harvard, and Boston Universities. For the past three decades, she was a core Faculty member at the Union Institute and University and was professor emerita there at the time of her death. An unwavering feminist, she was a founding member of “Science for the People” and the New Words bookstore in Cambridge; she maintained her ties to the bookstore throughout its 28-year history. Along the way, she wrote a book about women searching for their missing grandchildren who were among the “disappeared” under the military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This influential book was titled Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina and was published in 1999. Throughout her life, Rita could always be found at events, rallies, and protests against injustice and suppression of human rights. Occasionally she was a speaker, but she always was present on the side of the oppressed.

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