Alaska Health Policy Review

Dear Reader:

A year ago, Alaska Community Action on Toxics joined Beyond Pesticides, Food & Water Watch and more than 80 other health and consumer groups in filing a petition calling for a ban on triclosan. Not only has EPA acknowledged these concerns, the agency is calling for public comment. We have until February 7, 2011, to let EPA know that triclosan must be banned from consumer products to protect people and the environment.

Triclosan is an antibacterial chemical widely used in soaps, facial cleansers, toothpaste, cosmetics, deodorant, and other personal care and consumer products. Triclosan is now found in the bodies of 75 percent of the U.S. population and is linked to endocrine disruption, bacterial and antibiotic resistance, dioxin contamination, and contaminated fish and biosolids. While consumers might think triclosan can protect them from harmful bacteria, it turns out that the use of this dangerous chemical in household products is no more effective than soap and water - and may be doing more harm than good.

EPA published in the Federal Register a petition filed by 82 public health and environmental groups, including Alaska Community Action on Toxics, to ban triclosan for non-medical use. The Federal Register notice (Petition for a Ban on Triclosan, 75 FR 76461, December 8, 2010) invites the public to comment on the need to ban triclosan under numerous federal statutes.

You may submit comments electronically: email EPA

OR

You may submit comments by mail:

Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP)
Regulatory Public Docket (7502P)
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington DC 20460-0001

Re: Petition for a Ban on Triclosan. Docket Number: EPA-HQ-OPP-2010-0548

Note: this information is excerpted from a recent electronic publication from Alaska Community Action on Toxics. I thought you would want to know about the issue. -- ldw

Lawrence D. Weiss PhD, MS

Editor, AHPR

ldweiss@acpp.info

Important Information About this Newsletter

The formatting of this electronic version of Alaska Health Policy Review may be degraded due to variations in Internet service providers, browsers, and email applications. To ensure that you are reading a complete and properly formatted version of the publication, please click on "For the most readable copy of the newsletter please click here" located just above the banner at the top of the newsletter.

Back to top

Interview with Pam Miller of Alaska Community Action on Toxics

Pam Miller is the founder and executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, a local organization founded in 1997 in response to requests from Alaskans for information and technical assistance with environmental contaminants. Miller credits much of the inspiration for her work with ACAT to Annie Alowa, a former health aide and Elder from St. Lawrence Island, who for two decades campaigned to get the military to clean up its toxic legacy on St. Lawrence Island. In this interview, Miller talks about ACAT's organizational structure and its mission, reviews its accomplishments and ongoing projects, and reveals her hopes for legislative successes during the 27th Alaska Legislature. This interview was recorded on January 7, 2011, and has been edited for length and clarity.

Links to selected topics

What is ACAT?
Five program focus areas
Chemicals don't respect political boundaries
Advocating for the protection of workers
ACAT affiliated with national organizations
Educating medical professionals about environmental health issues
Alaska's rural communities facing environmental health issues
Federal and state legislative policies can prevent environmental health issues
Legacy of toxic waste in many locations around Alaska

What is ACAT?

AHPR: I wonder if you could give us an overview of ACAT. What is its mission and its activities? Let's start there.

Miller: Alaska Community Action on Toxics is an environmental health justice research and advocacy organization, and we work statewide on community-based research projects and policy projects to advance policies to protect environmental health and justice. We really got our start in 1997 and we began, in response to requests from communities around Alaska -- mostly rural Alaska -- who were concerned about contamination from military and industrial operations, mining operations, long-range transport of chemicals into the Arctic and that sort of thing. We began to develop a program to try to offer technical assistance and then also, as I mentioned, to advance policies that would change our regulatory system so that it can be more protective of human health and the environment.

AHPR: Could you give us some sense of the size of your organization, maybe budget, maybe number of employees, members, that kind of thing?

Miller: Sure, we have six employees based here in Anchorage and then we have four community health researchers out on Saint Lawrence Island that are working as part of a National Institute of Environmental Sciences community-based research project. We have about 350 members, and we have a mailing list of over 3,000, and we offer e-mail alerts and workshops and teleconference seminars also on a monthly basis as part of the Alaska Collaborative on Health and the Environment to engage health care professionals, scientists, students, and other community leaders on environmental health issues, policy issues. Our mission is that we believe everyone has the right to clean air, clean water, and toxics-free food, and we work to stop the production and release of chemicals into the environment, into our bodies, that may harm human health or the environment.

" ... I think I just came to the realization that it was really important, not only to do good science in the field, but that the world is really in a dire situation with regard to environmental health."

AHPR: Are you a nonprofit 501(c)(3)?

Miller: Yes, we are. We were established first as a program of the Alaska Conservation Foundation in 1997, and then we became our own independent 501(c)(3) organization in 2001.

AHPR: I understand that you are the founder of ACAT and the executive director. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your background, and why you founded the organization.

Miller: My background is in biology, and I have a bachelor's in biology and a master's in environmental health, and I've been involved in marine education and research for many years, worked for public agencies, and also for the group Greenpeace as a research scientist, and I think I just came to the realization that it was really important, not only to do good science in the field, but that the world is really in a dire situation with regard to environmental health. And that it was important to do good community-based science but that also we had to work concurrently to change policies toward a more precautionary approach so that we can actually, rather than be reactionary all the time, that we could actually advance protective policies.

From a personal point of view, I came to this probably a lot because of my family background. I was born in Ohio, in a small town where there was a chemical manufacturing corporation and, it turned out that they're now kind of a major Superfund or national priorities list site because of the chemical contamination in my community. Several of my family members have suffered various serious health effects as a result. Our home was within the zone of concern where there was dioxin and other persistent chemical contamination. So I've always just been very interested in these issues personally and feel again just compelled to change the paradigm about how we regulate these chemicals and that there's something very wrong about the fact that our regulatory system right now allows the production and the release of these chemicals without consent, without proper testing, and the system really needs to be changed. Back to selected topics list

Five program focus areas

AHPR: I believe you have several major program areas. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about the issues and your activities in each of these areas starting with northern contaminants and health.

Miller: Well we've kind of changed those around a little bit and I can give you another sort of overview. We have now five program areas. One focused on environmental and rural environmental justice. One focused on environmental health education. Another focused in environmental health policy change, healing and wellness, and then community outreach. I can talk a little bit about each one of those.

AHPR: Please do.

Miller: The rural and environmental justice program area is really where we do our community-based research and advocacy efforts. So, for instance, we've been working for more than 10 years with the communities on St. Lawrence Island to address the military contamination there. The military left a terrible toxic legacy of chemical contamination from their two, now formerly used defense sites: one at Northeast Cape on St. Lawrence Island and one at Gambell. They left massive fuel spills, PCBs, pesticides, heavy metals, a range of other contaminants that are having a profound effect on the environment and health.

We were really inspired by the work of a former health aide and Elder in the community, Annie Alowa, who called our attention to this issue [and] asked for assistance from Alaska Community Action on Toxics. Since her death in 1999, [we] have carried this work on, engaging the community in research and advocacy work to try to hold the military accountable for responsible cleanup at Northeast Cape and Gambell. So that's been a big part of our work, and we actually have a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to carry on that work, to train people to do fieldwork, to do community-based health surveys, to engage scientists from several different research institutions, and really work together with the public agencies to get things changed in a positive way out there.

We also work with communities, at their request, on various issues related to mining. There is a lot of concern, for example, about the proposed gold mine at Donlin Creek and the fact that, if developed, that mine would result in large emissions of mercury, which have serious health consequences because it's such a very potent neurotoxin and causes neurodevelopmental effects at very low exposure levels. So that's a great concern. We have worked with communities on coal, proposed coal mining developments, oil and gas and those kinds of things.

"We were really inspired by the work of a former health aide and Elder in the community, Annie Alowa, who called our attention to this issue ... "

Those requests really are community-based so we respond. Sometimes it's a matter of just answering a simple question, sometimes it leads to a larger research project or some kind of collaborative project with the communities that request our assistance.

And then we do environmental health education. The largest project we have within that program area is the Alaska Collaborative on Health and the Environment, where we organize statewide monthly teleconference seminars where we try to invite cutting-edge scientists, health care professionals, policy experts, environmental justice experts to speak on various environmental health topics that are of interest to Alaskans. We've had topics ranging from issues around learning and developmental disabilities and the latest science that's showing links between exposure to chemicals such as PCBs and other persistent chemicals, to specific issues related to mining or military development, and long-range transport of chemicals into the Arctic. Those have been going on now for about four years.

AHPR: Can anybody call in or how does that work?

Miller: Yes, they are free calls, and people are welcome to get on an e-mail alert list. We let them know what topics are being put forward each month. We also welcome people to make suggestions for topics that they'd like to know about or participate in.

AHPR: And people can get onto your e-mail alert list by going to your web site?

Miller: Yes. We are just about ready to launch our new web site next week but the web site address will be the same. Back to selected topics list

Chemicals don't respect political boundaries

AHPR: Shall we move on to policy?

Miller: Okay, on policy. Yes, one of the realizations that we had fairly early on with our organization is that chemicals don't respect political boundaries. We found it necessary to work at the local level -- really to the international level -- to change policies. For example, one of the local issues that we worked on starting in about 2000, was some teachers called us about their concerns about pesticide use in the Anchorage School District. We did a research project to show that there was widespread use of pesticides in the schools by the Anchorage School District, that they were doing district wide applications of pesticides that are known to be harmful to health, particularly children's health.

We worked for over a year with the Anchorage School District and the result of that was a nationally precedent-setting policy requiring least toxic pest management in the Anchorage School District, and we were very pleased with that. In fact, one of the pesticides that was being used in the Anchorage School District at the time that we were working on this policy was later banned by the EPA because of its toxic effects on children's health. So it was, I think, [a] preemptive or again precautionary effort to protect children's health but also the health of the workers in the schools. That was an example of a local policy.

We've also worked at the state legislative level to put forward legislative initiatives. We worked, advocated for, and successfully passed a statewide pesticide "right to know" law -- I believe in 2005 -- and that enjoyed bipartisan support. We're now working on at least two other bills that we plan to advocate for in the upcoming session which is set to begin very soon. One would be a healthy schools bill. We believe Sen. Bettye Davis will be sponsoring that bill. This would implement many of the provisions of the Anchorage School District policy statewide but also address toxic cleaning products that can be used in the school that are harmful to, again, especially children's health but also the health of janitorial staff and teachers who work in the school. So a healthy schools bill.

"We think that just doesn't make sense: that if we can replace those chemicals with safer alternatives, that we should do that."

The second is a bill that would phase out a class of chemicals that are used widely in products such as electronics and furniture, known as PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers. They're flame retardant chemicals but they're extremely toxic and persistent, and our research shows that these chemicals are not necessary to prevent, to retard flames, that there are safe alternatives that don't require the use of these extremely persistent toxic chemicals. This class of chemicals, PPDEs, were chemicals that were used to replace PCBs, which were banned in 1970s, and a lot of the current research shows that these chemicals have many of the same properties as PCBs. They affect neurodevelopment, they can cause cancer, they are associated with thyroid suppression, and many other health effects that are coming out in the current scientific literature.

There was a study published recently by the Columbia Center for Children's Health that showed that children who are exposed to these chemicals while they are developing in their mother's womb, later -- at ages 2, 4, and 6 -- will have intellectual deficits as a result of that exposure. Children and other people are getting these exposures in their homes through household dust and air that we're exposed to because these chemicals are released from electronics and furniture foams and carpet backing and so on and so forth. We think that just doesn't make sense -- that if we can replace those chemicals with safer alternatives, we should do that.

In Alaska, people are exposed not only in their homes but also because these chemicals are transported atmospherically and tend to concentrate in the Arctic. There are high levels in some of the traditional foods, and women in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta have been shown to have some of the highest levels of these chemicals in the Circumpolar Arctic. So, we are quite concerned about that and feel that that kind of evidence really should compel us to enact protective measures to phase these chemicals out and replace them with safer alternatives.

On the national level we're working on reform of the very outmoded Toxic Substances Control Act, which was enacted over 30 years ago when there was very little science about many of the chemicals that are now in commerce, and we have over 80,000 chemicals that are on the market right now. Less than five percent of them have been fully tested for a range of toxicity outcomes and human health effects. So, the policies that we're advocating for in Congress would replace the Toxic Substances Control Act with a bill that requires advanced testing, again precaution before these things are put on the market, require the manufacturers to do testing to prove that they're safe rather than allowing them to be on the market and later find out that, in fact, some of these chemicals are quite harmful. Many of these persistent chemicals are persistent, and they are transported atmospherically or through oceanic currents and the Arctic has now become a hemispheric sink, so I think that's really all the more reason why we in Alaska need to advocate for policies at all these levels to prevent the release of the chemicals that can end up in the Arctic and harm the ecosystem as well as human health. Back to selected topics list

Advocating for the protection of workers

AHPR: One of the other areas you mentioned was healing and well-being ... Wellness.

Miller: Wellness. Yes, and that's the program that we include in our overall organizational work to support chemically injured workers. Over the years we have had a number of workers, and I know this is something near and dear to your heart, who have been exposed on the job, ranging from oil and gas field workers to mining workers, sometimes even within small businesses, health care professionals. The labor law is not really set up to protect workers from chemical exposures, or to address chemical exposures once they have been exposed on the job. So we have helped workers, including the Amchitka nuclear workers, Exxon Valdez oil spill workers, individual workers who come to us for questions or seeking research about health effects and that sort of thing -- and to advocate for stronger provisions to protect workers on the job from chemical exposures.

AHPR: I think the last major sort of area you had mentioned was community outreach.

Miller: Yes, and within that program we do a lot of outreach within the community. We offer [a] lecture series. We have organic community gardening projects. We have a booth at the Anchorage farmers market where we offer alternatives to the use of pesticides and harmful chemical fertilizers. We do a range of community events -- work, for instance, with the Steller High School to do a cooperative community garden at Steller High School. And this is just really where we show our interest and hopefully walk our talk in the community and offer safe alternatives, assist people who might want to know more information about safer products that they might use in their home, and we offer educational programs and lectures and workshops to help offer positive solutions.

" ... the labor law is not really set up to protect workers from chemical exposures, or to address chemical exposures once they have been exposed on the job."

AHPR: You have a very impressive organization, an array of things that you do, services you provide, and so forth. How do you manage to pay for all of this? Where does your funding come from?

Miller: Good question. Well, we are a nonprofit organization so we have supported this work through foundation grants ranging from local foundation grants such as the Alaska Conservation Foundation, the Leighty Foundation, Alaska Run For Women, are some of our local funders here, foundation funders here in Alaska. And then we also get foundation support from other foundations based in the Northwest, Washington D.C. and New York. And we have, right now, one federal grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is culminating this coming July. It's been a four-year research project, and we hope to receive funding for an additional project that we proposed to try to understand some of the newer chemicals that are in commerce right now and their affects on human health and the Arctic. So we have a proposal in to NIEHS again right now. And then we also get support from our members and supporters. Back to selected topics list

ACAT affiliated with national organizations

AHPR: Do you have any sort of national affiliations? For example are you members of national coalitions or any other kind of national networks -- that kind of thing?

Miller: Yes, we are, and one the national affiliations that we're a part of that I'm really excited about right now is called Safer Chemicals Healthy Families. That's a coalition of environmental health, justice organizations, health care professional organizations, that are joining together to influence national policy to replace the toxic substances control act. We have been able to prompt and help shape legislation that has been introduced in both the House and Senate, that we hope will advance over this coming congressional session that would really transform that ancient, now 30-year-old law, again to be more protective of human health. I think there are probably 150 or so organizations involved with that right now. We were a founding member, and a member of the steering committee of that organization.

"We've been advocating over the past several years for the phase out of chemicals that are particularly harmful to the Arctic and that includes chemicals such as endosulfan, which is very persistent pesticide."

We're also part of an international network of also environmental health and justice organizations called the International POPS Elimination Network. POPS stands for persistent organic pollutants. This is a really exciting network of groups from many, many different countries from all continents, some very small grassroots groups some groups such as International Doctors for the Environment and Physicians for Social Responsibility, who are working together, mainly right now on the Stockholm Convention on Persistent [Organic] Pollutants to get countries to phase out toxic chemicals that have global implications. It's a legally binding treaty that, I think now, over hundred 170 nations have signed onto. The convention initially addressed a set of 12 chemicals called the dirty dozen, ones that we're all familiar with like the pesticide DDT, dioxins, some of the most harmful chemicals on the planet. It phases those out, and has the very important -- and I think the real strength of the treaty -- is that it allows for the addition of new chemicals that are of global significance.

We've been advocating over the past several years for the phase out of chemicals that are particularly harmful to the Arctic and that includes chemicals such as endosulfan, which is very persistent pesticide. Up until last year it was widely used in the U.S. The U.S. just banned it last year, something we've been working for several years. The brominated flame retardants, a set of chemicals called perfluorinated chemicals which are used in a variety of stain resistant applications, in cookware, clothing, many, many different applications. But again, these chemicals are showing up in the bodies of wildlife and people of the Arctic. We think something is fundamentally wrong with that. And, you know, when safer alternatives exist, it just makes common sense to replace those chemicals and try to phase them out. So, the Stockholm Convention and the International POPS Elimination Network. We're are also part of the Alaska Public Health Association and pleased to be a part of that as well and engage with a number of health organizations of health care professionals. Back to selected topics list

Educating medical professionals about environmental health issues

AHPR: That leads to my next question. How well are your efforts received by or appreciated by the Alaska public health community and the medical community?

Miller: Well, you know, I think it's been interesting. I think in some respects we've been well received. The Alaska Public Health Association has passed three resolutions that we have been a part of to help advocate for vulnerable populations and to recognize the effects of mercury and to try to phase out chemicals such as mercury. One resolution on the effects of chemicals on reproductive health, and we've been well received in those venues and at the health summit and groups like the Alaska nurses' association have been very supportive of these efforts. Midwives, you know, really, I think, have a natural affiliation for the understanding, and engagement in the issues.

One of the things we've realized is that environmental health is not a big part of medical education for nurses or doctors. I think that's beginning to change but we've realized that there's a lot of new evidence out there in the scientific literature that isn't necessarily making it into clinical practice or in public health practice. Public health, from my perspective, for a long time has really been focused on things like infectious diseases, and not so much chemical exposures and health outcomes. There's so much new evidence that really is revolutionary that, I think, transforms the notion that the dose makes the poison. Some of these chemicals can have endocrine effects, for instance, at extremely low doses or exposure levels.

So we feel that a part of our work is to help, not only engage, but also educate and bring scientists that are involved in this research as part of the Alaska Collaborative on Health and the Environment, to bring this research to help make people aware about the latest research. We know people are really busy in their professions, and it is often difficult to get out there and read all these journal articles and to really know where the science is going on this. So we felt really compelled to help bridge that gap to the extent we can.

" ... public health, from my perspective, for a long time has really been focused on things like infectious diseases, and not so much chemical exposures and health outcomes."

AHPR: You've mentioned a few times this "Alaska collaborative." Is that a coalition of local organizations? Could you just talk a little bit more about what that is?

Miller: Sure. The Alaska Collaborative on Health and the Environment is a regional partnership of the national Collaborative on Health and the Environment. It began, let me say, about 10 years ago as a way to bring health care professionals together with scientists and students and activists, to understand science together and to work on policies together. I think there are several regional partnerships within the national Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and they have working groups on different topics -- so there's a reproductive health and environment working group. There is a cancer and the environment working group. There is one on electromagnetic radiation. There are different ones that really try to bring the best scientific thinking to efforts to advance policy.

The national Collaborative on Health and the Environment not only has working groups but they also sponsor free teleconferences, and you can get on their mailing list. They have a wonderful web site that has a toxicant and disease database so that you can, say if you're interested in Parkinson's Disease and you want to know if chemical exposures might have anything to do with the onset of Parkinson's, you can go into this database, click on Parkinson's Disease and it will bring all of peer reviewed literature associated with that topic. So it's an incredible research tool as well as a great forum for discussing the latest science and policy issues around environmental health. Back to selected topics list

Alaska's rural communities facing environmental health issues

AHPR: I've noticed over the years that you appear to have, you and your organization, appear to have an especially strong connection with rural Alaska and Alaska Natives. I wonder if you could talk about that a bit.

Miller: Sure, well, I think one of the reasons that I decided to found the Alaska Community Action on Toxics was that, you know, I saw that there was a real gap, that the conservation groups in Alaska weren't necessarily serving the needs of Alaska rural communities, in the sense that most conservation groups are focused on wilderness designation or protection of a certain river or watershed but not necessarily addressing the health issues and health concerns. And that the health care providers were really focused on primary care rather than prevention or environmental health issues.

So there just was a real gap. We were getting, when I worked as a research scientist for Greenpeace, we were getting requests for communities who were concerned about mercury contamination from an old mine on the Wood River near Aleknagik, for instance, or a call for help from the village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island. The health aide there, Annie Alowa, was really concerned about her perception that adverse health outcomes were a result of the military contamination on her island.

No one was really responding to many of these types of requests so I just felt that it was necessary to create an organization and hopefully build the kind of infrastructure that we could, to help serve those needs and also to have a board of directors that reflected those communities. [As a result] 7 out of 10 of our board members are Alaska Native from rural Alaska communities. We have health care professionals on our board as well. And then we also have Alaska Native staff because we feel that, you know, the diversity representing the communities of Alaska that we serve is very important.

Back to selected topics list

Federal and state legislative policies can prevent environmental health issues

AHPR: At the time of our interview right now, the new legislative session of 2011 is about start up. You talked about this a little bit, but I wonder if you have anything else to say about particular legislation you will be following or advocating or otherwise concerned about?

Miller: Yes, I mentioned the two bills. One is the healthy schools bill and we're hopeful that Sen. Bettye Davis will sponsor that bill again. She sponsored it last session. It's been challenging with the shortened session take to get things through because the legislators there have many, many issues and bills before them but we're hoping to move that bill. The preventing toxic exposures bill, which is the bill that would phase out the class of substances known as brominated flame-retardants, had two sponsors last session. Senator Bill Wielechowski and Representative Lindsey Holmes, and again we're hopeful that they will again cosponsor this bill, and we hope that this is something that can receive bipartisan support because these are issues that affect the health of everyone. We were pleased last session that that bill passed out of the Health and Social Services committee, [Senator] Bettye Davis' committee, so it's gotten some traction and we hope, again, that it will advance and pass during the upcoming session.

"I think our work really has a lot to do with hopefully lowering health care costs in the future by preventing what are really preventable diseases of the future by reducing and eliminating chemical exposures."

AHPR: I wonder if there are any consequences or effect of the national Affordable Care Act that you are following, interested in, or might affect Alaskans, from the point of view of your interests.

Miller: Yes. I haven't had an opportunity to know a lot of the details but it certainly affects our work because we see people out there who have exposures to harmful chemicals and outcomes that we think are related to chemical exposures, and so it's very important to have a health care system that can respond to those needs and hopefully get to real prevention. There are a lot of people out there, I think, who have chronic health problems. I think the provision that would allow insurance for people with pre-existing conditions is really important. There is a lot of evidence right now, for example, that shows link between chemical exposure and diabetes, the onset of diabetes. So again, measures in our health care system that can offer health care for people with chronic illnesses will be extremely important. Hopefully this will help lead to further prevention of these problems in the first place, which I think will also serve to reduce health care costs in the long term. So I think our work really has a lot to do with hopefully lowering health care costs in the future by preventing what are really preventable diseases of the future by reducing and eliminating chemical exposures.

AHPR: Do you do any work, or have any working relationships with epidemiological studies here in the state or efforts or monitoring type efforts, say of certain types of cancers or whatever?

Miller: We have certainly met with and engaged with the state Department of Health Division of Epidemiology and meet with them on a fairly regular basis. We also have really advocated for health tracking of -- not only cancer, which is something that we have a registry for -- but also some of the other chronic diseases that might be related to chemical exposures including learning and developmental disabilities. Certainly, there's a lot of information. One of the great concerns we've had, and we've talked to the Division of Epidemiology about this, is the high rate of birth defects in Alaska.

Alaska has the highest birth defect rate in the country and, not only that, but Alaska Native children have a birth defects rate even higher than that of Caucasian children in Alaska. So that's a great concern and that birth defect rate not only has to do with the sort of usual suspects or the usual risk factors of alcohol and smoking, but a large part of that birth defect rate can't be explained by those factors. We think that exposure to environmental teratogens, or substances that can cause birth defects, may be a very important factor because of the proximity of many rural Alaska Native communities to military or industrial sites -- the fact that traditional foods are contaminated with persistent chemicals that can be associated with adverse birth outcomes, open burning, which can release persistent chemicals like dioxin -- these are factors that we think that the state, public health community, and specifically the Division of Epidemiology have not taken seriously enough to warn women and parents how to prevent exposures while a child is developing, or even conceived at that point. Back to selected topics list

Legacy of toxic waste in many locations around Alaska

AHPR: I remember some years ago I looked at your web site and there was this extraordinary map. I think it was known military sites or something along those lines. I don't know if you still have that map up there, but could you address it from that geographical point of view?

Miller: Sure. One of the things that we did fairly early on in our organization's history is to integrate data from several different state and federal agencies to create a series of GIS maps, and the map you are referring to is a map of the formerly used and currently used defense sites in Alaska. I'm sure you know, Alaska has been a place of great strategic importance for the U.S. military Department of Defense -- really beginning before World War II and extending through the cold war and continuing to present times. We have over 700 formerly used defense sites, five military Superfund sites in Alaska, and the military has left a legacy of toxic waste in many locations around Alaska, including many communities in rural Alaska. These are sites where chemical contaminants were left in unlined landfills, left to release into freshwater and the coastal environment, places where people are gathering traditional foods -- whether its greens or berries, fish or marine mammals.

" [In Alaska] over 700 formerly used defense sites, five military Superfund sites in Alaska, and the military has left a legacy of toxic waste in many locations around Alaska ... "

At Northeast Cape on St. Lawrence Island, the military site was created within a watershed of the Suqi River, which was once a site where the people of St. Laurence Island favored for gathering salmon, greens and berries. The Suqi River has been destroyed by the military. The fish runs have never returned. The fish are contaminated. The plants and berries in the Northeast Cape area are contaminated. The village that was once there has been displaced. There are still families that rely on traditional fishing and hunting camps there and the people there really want to hold the military accountable for responsible cleanup and it's just a very serious environmental justice issue maybe not known by most people who live in urban Alaska. And it's an issue that many rural Alaska communities face.

AHPR: Well I've run out of my list of questions I wanted to ask you, and I wonder if you have any closing comments you would like to make to the readers of Alaska Health Policy Review.

Miller: Well, just that we welcome people to engage with us on these issues, to work with us on these public policy issues. We think we have a huge opportunity coming up with this legislative session to pass some important bills that we think would be protective of health and the environment and we really hope to engage people. We just welcome people to call with questions, comments, interest in testifying, writing letters, and that sort of thing. Also, we certainly welcome volunteers. We have volunteers that help us with research, we certainly also welcome that as well.

AHPR: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.

Miller: This is a great opportunity, and we sure appreciate it. Back to selected topics list

Back to top

Please Respect Our Copyright

Alaska Health Policy Review is sent to individual and group subscribers for their exclusive use. Please contact us for information regarding significant discounts for multiple subscriptions within a single organization. Distributing copies of the Alaska Health Policy Review is prohibited under copyright restrictions without written permission from the editor; however, we encourage the use of a few sentences from an issue for reviews and other "Fair Use."

We appreciate your referral of colleagues to akhealthpolicy.org in order to obtain a sample copy. The Alaska Center for Public Policy holds the copyright for Alaska Health Policy Review. Your respect for our copyright allows us to continue to provide this service to you.

For all related matters, please contact the editor, Lawrence D. Weiss, at health.policy.review@gmail.com.

Back to top

Suicide Prevention Council Releases 2010 Report

The Alaska Statewide Suicide Prevention Council released its FY2010 report recently. The report, intended to inform Alaskans about the issues surrounding suicide in Alaska, stresses that while the suicide rate has remained steady during the last decade, a significant cultural shift has occurred that opens the dialog about the issue of suicide in Alaska.

The council reviewed data related to suicide in Alaska over the last ten years and in the report they detail thought provoking statistics:

Suicide is one of the top ten causes of death in Alaska.
Young people, ages 15-24, continue to have the highest rates of suicide in Alaska.
Statewide, among Alaska Natives in this age group, the suicide rate is 141.6/100,000 for young men and 50.3/100,000 for young women. Among Caucasians in this age group, the suicide rate is 33.8/100,000 for men and 6.1/100,000 for women.
In 2009, the number of people committing suicide was greatest in the Anchorage area. However, rural Alaska had higher rates of suicide, suggesting a more dramatic impact on rural communities.

FY2010 achievements reported by the council include:

Identifying suicide prevention projects throughout Alaska and determining that strengthening the connections between programs was a priority in FY2010.
Hosting the first Suicide Prevention Summit in January 2010 that brought together Tribal Health suicide prevention programs and the state-funded suicide prevention programs. Following the summit, cooperation between state and Tribal entities has increased dramatically.
Developing a web portal at StopSuicideAlaska.org that provides a forum for stakeholder information sharing and support using input gathered at the Suicide Prevention Summit and funding from the Alaska Mental Health Trust. The council is also exploring the use of social media outlets to improve outreach efforts and strengthen communication with stakeholders.

For more information and to read the full report, visit the Alaska Statewide Suicide Prevention Council web site.

Back to top

CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report 2011 Released

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the first in a periodic series of reports that examine health disparities in selected social and health indicators on January 14, 2011. "Health disparities" refers to the gaps in health outcomes experienced by some segments of the population. The bulk of the report is a collection of 22 essays that address a selection of social disparities and their associated health consequences. The challenges are identified, and in some cases, promising interventions that may effectively reduce the incidence of health disparities are also identified.

Back to top

Health Policy Calendar