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Community Activist information

The Hesperian Health Guides
Publishes community and public health guides on a range of issues including community and environmental health. Hesperian strives for a world in which people and communities are equipped to achieve health for all. Their mission is to provide information and educational tools that help all people take greater control over their health and work to eliminate the underlying causes of poor health.

Community Based Research
Engaging Health Centres in Community Based Participatory Research to Improve Health Outcomes.

CHAMACOS Study
The Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) Study is the longest running longitudinal birth cohort study of pesticides and other environmental exposures among children in a farmworker community. CHAMACOS means “little children” in Mexican Spanish, which reflects the population we serve.

CalEnviroScreen
CalEnviroSCreen is a mapping tool produced by the Californian Environmental Protection Agency to help Californian Communities that are most affected by many sources of pollution. It uses environmental, health and socioeconomic information to produce scores so that different communities can be compared. The data comes from state and federal government sources. There are many useful factsheets and considers ‘cumulative impacts’ from all sources of pollution that affect those most sensitive such as young children, people with asthma and socioeconomic factors such as race and ethnicity, poverty, and education.

Southeast Community Research Centre
Building Democracy Through Research. Success stories from communities who have used Community Based Participatory Research methods to resolve longstanding issues to great effect.

Useful organisations and sources of information

Hazards Magazine
A wide range of useful information on health and safety issue from the award-winning Hazards Magazine.

Job insecurity – the deadly hazards of precarious work. Insecure work is not just unfair, it’s downright unhealthy. Hazards challenges the dangerous shift to increasingly precarious work.

Pesticide Action Network UK
Promoting safe and sustainable alternatives to pesticides. Resources can be accessed here.

Pesticide Action Network Europe
PAN Europe is a network of non-governmental organisations, institutions and individuals worldwide working to minimise the negative effects of hazardous pesticides and to replace their use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives.

Phyto-Victims France
In French but can be viewed using webpage translate tool
The Phyto-victims association was created on March 19 2011, by agriculture professionals who were concerned that used in the context of their trades had caused damage important and irreversible on their health, and recognition as victims of the pesticide.

Georgina Downs – UK Pesticides Campaign
Georgina Downs runs the UK Pesticides Campaign to highlight the adverse health and environmental effects of pesticides. She has lived next to regularly sprayed fields for 22 years and has long-standing health problems.

Pesticides

Occupational Pesticide exposure
Occupational Pesticide Illness Prevention Program form the Californian Department of Public Health.

Resources for workers, employers and health care professional on how to prevent illness through indoor and outdoor pesticide application. A factsheet, poster and website from the Occupational Pesticide Illness Prevention Program in the Californian Department of Public Health.

Applying pesticides
Protecting Agricultural Pesticide Handlers – Practical solutions for Pesticide Safety. Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Centre, University of Washington.

The Environment and Health Atlas for England and Wales
A collection of maps illustrating geographical distributions of disease risk and environmental agents.

PAN Europe’s list of banned or restricted pesticides in the EU
List of pesticides and active ingredients banned, restricted or authorised in the EU.

The Severely Hazardous Pesticides Formulations (SHPF) Kit
The Toolkit has been developed to provide guidance on setting up a system for reporting an SHPF it provides Guidance on how to monitor and report incidents of pesticide poisoning caused by SHP exposure.

Lincolnshire Public Health Information

Lincolnshire Research Observatory
This website contains specific data on population, health and many other topics from a wide range of local and national agencies relating to Lincolnshire.

Public Health and Social Care in Lincolnshire
A wide range of useful information ranging from health protection to stats on commissioning, including news and blogs on health.

Lincolnshire County Council
Information about the latest county health data and key publications.

Boston Borough Council
Boston and Lincolnshire Health Profiles. Health profiles provide a snapshot of health for each local council in England using key health indicators, which enables comparison locally, regionally and over time.

Cancer Statistics

Office of National Statistics
The UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute of the UK.

National Cancer Data Repository
Archive data from 1990-2010

Public Health England
PHE exists to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities. PHE is an executive agency, sponsored by the Department of Health and Social Care

The Environment and Health Atlas for England and Wales
A collection of maps illustrating geographical distributions of disease risk and environmental agents

Cancer in the East Midlands
Public Health England – East Midlands report on cancer in the East Midlands.

Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK pioneers research, fundraising and raising awareness about cancer.

Health and Safety Executive
Guidance on how to use these products safely and information about controls over pesticide residues in food. HSE information on Working with Pesticides.

Videos and films

There’s Something in the Water is a 2019 Canadian documentary film, directed by Elliot Page and Ian Daniel. An examination of environmental racism, the film explores the disproportionate effect of environmental damage from landfill sites, paper pulp mills and natural gas plants on Black Canadian and First Nations communities in Nova Scotia. Available on Netflix.

Brazil: Pesticide Poisonings in Rural Areas.

A Day’s Work (2015) – The documentary is based on ground-breaking investigative reporting, A DAY’S WORK reshaped perceptions of temp work and our safety on the job.

Barefoot research or be your own workplace detective

Hazards magazine on-line tools

Chemical Detox for the Workplace
A unique guide to securing a non-toxic work environment from the Centre for Progressive Reform.

Working Women at Risk – an on-line tool helps researchers and advocates to visualize the exposures to chemicals that might be putting California’s working women at risk for breast cancer. Useful information on various chemical exposures at work relevant beyond Californian. Learn more at http://www.cbcrp.org/research-topics/worker-exposure.html.

BAREFOOT Research: A Worker’s Manual for Organising On Work Security
Margaret Keith, James Brophy, Peter Kirby, Ellen Rosskam, 2002
This manual has been developed to help empower workers to increase their level of control over their own work situations, to protect their health and well being, and to improve their level of basic security.

Toxic Tours

Toxic tours originated from the US where various community groups, occupational health and safety campaigners and communities organised tours of toxic hotspots in their local areas. Very useful events to highlight issues by inviting decision makers, politicians and those most affected by polluting – the workers and the communities who live near the source.

Windsor Canada Toxic Tour (2011) : Just how much pollution does an industry create? A group of concerned citizens learn the numbers when they take a bus tour of the worst polluting industries in their city’s west end. The city is Windsor, Ontario, Canada

From Pink to Prevention Toxic Tour in London, UK. On the 29th June 2013, From Pink to Prevention organised a toxic tour in Central London. The tour took in various sites of significance in relation to cancer prevention – or rather the lack of action on cancer prevention by government offices and other bodies.

Justice for Farm Workers: Lake Apopka is the most polluted large lake in the state of Florida. The destruction of the lake and the deterioration of farm workers’ health were caused by the release of dangerous chemicals into the environment. In 2008 the Farm Worker Association of Florida (FWAF) gathered communities and students together to learn and discuss the effects of pesticides in the Lake Apopka area.

Migrant and Seasonal workers

Farmworker Justice
A US based nonprofit organization that seeks to empower migrant and seasonal farmworkers to improve their living and working conditions, immigration status, health, occupational safety, and access to justice. Read their Exposed and Ignored report here.

Trade Union Congress
A TUC guide for trade union activists. Information for people coming to work in the UK from within and beyond the European Union. It gives information about your legal rights while you work here.

The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority
The GLAA works in partnership to protect vulnerable and exploited workers working to prevent worker exploitation,  protect vulnerable people and tackle unlicensed/criminal activity and ensuring those licensed operate within the law.

Information on Chemicals

ChemHat
The Chemical Hazard and Alternatives Toolbox, is an internet database designed to offer up easy to use information that we can use to protect ourselves, our families and our co-workers against the harm that chemicals can cause.

The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDx) 
Easy accessible factsheets and infographics on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs).

Hazards Magazine
Approaching 100,000 chemicals are used in workplaces worldwide. Barely 1 in a 100 has been thoroughly tested for health risks. Over 50 substances are rated by the United Nations’ International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a definite or probable cancer risk at work. Over 100 more are IARC rated as a possible cancer risk.

Roadmap on Carcinogens
One of the main aims of the Roadmap on carcinogens is to share good practices between companies and organisations. Identifying smart solutions and sharing good practices between businesses and organisations, could make a tremendous difference by reducing workers’ exposure to carcinogens, and it would improve the survival of many workers today and tomorrow.

The SIN List (Substitute It Now) 
The SIN List consists of chemicals that have been identified by ChemSec as being Substances of Very High Concern (SVHCs) based on the criteria defined within REACH. It is a very useful tool for chemicals management globally.

The SINmilarity List
The SINimilarity tool is a database of more than 500,000 identified chemical structures, which you can search for any of those structures, names or CAS/EC numbers and see if the substance you are looking for is similar to a substance on the SIN List. A useful tool to check that any substitution is not as toxic as the chemical or substance it is substituting.

Pollution Statistics
UK Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) data sets from DEFRA.

Occupational Cancer

Books
European Trade Union Institute (ETUI): Cancer and Work: understanding occupational cancers and taking action to eliminate them.

UBC Press book Edited by Dayna Nadine Scott: Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics, and Environmental Health. (2015) 

Graphics
Cancers and their work causes – An ITUC/Hazards at-a-glance guide to cancer hazards at work. Download pdf here.

Research Papers of interest
Occupational health: a world of false promises by  Ladou J, London L, Watterson A. Environmental Health 2018 17:81. Explores the scale of poor occupational health globally, WHO & ILO roles, the importance of ending conflicts of interest & the need to involve civil society at all levels.

Work and female breast cancer: The state of the evidence 2002-2017 by Engel C, Rasanayagum S, Gray J, and Rizzo J. New Solutions 2018 Vol 28 (1), p 55-78.

Work and Breast Cancer: Recommendations to Address Research Needs by Engel C, Rasanayagum S, Gray J, and Rizzo J. New Solutions 2018 Vol 28(1), p 79-95. Translations available in French, German and Italian.