Avis Antel

Environmental health tracking is a way of gathering more information about diseases and how they may be linked to our exposure in our air, water, and homes in order to take action to protect our health. Currently, there is very little data available on exposures to environmental hazards and the health effects that may be related to those exposures. The chemical industry and polluters may say "no data means no problem" but, based on the small, but growing evidence linking diseases like cancer, asthma, and Alzheimer's to toxic chemical exposure, we know that no data really means that the problems just haven't been adequately studied.

A national system of environmental health tracking would:

• track environmental hazards to guide exposure-prevention efforts;
• track disease trends to understand if they are changing over time — in residents province-wide, in specific populations, or in certain geographic areas;
• link environmental-hazard information, exposure data, and disease reports to support environmental-health research;
• inform the development and evaluation of the effectiveness of disease-prevention and environmental-protection programs and policies; and
• facilitate public access to information on environmental health issues.

Breast Cancer Action San Francisco is advancing these efforts in California as a member of the California Environmental Health Tracking Program Planning Consortium. Continuing to push for more and better data creates a continued demand that lawmakers and industry abide by the precautionary principle and, based on the weight of the evidence that already exists, reduce and eliminate our exposure to chemicals we know or suspect cause breast cancer and other chronic diseases.