NH Climate Health Action Talk
NH CHAT
December, 2023
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Working Group Updates
Annual Fundraiser Update
Rethink Plastics to Tackle Toxins
Cancer and Climate Change Webinar
Bimonthly Challenge
TED Talk by Pope Francis
Corporate Sponsors
Working Group Updates
Behavioral Health Working Group:
The Behavioral Health Working Group just wrapped up a 3-session course, “An Introduction to Mindfulness in Life” with Margaret Fletcher. Margaret is an advisor to the BESS Family Foundation Eco-Dharma Advisory Board, a group committed to leading efforts at the intersection of mindfulness/meditation and the environmental impact of climate change and biodiversity loss, and a co-founder of East Coast Mindfulness.
The group is also providing ongoing input to NH HWCA's SB496 (more info below) to ensure adequate attention to mental health issues. In upcoming meetings, the group will be examining where we are at and where we are going, planning directions and projects for the future.
CHICKs Working Group:
The Children’s Health Working Group will transition in 2024 to the CHICKs (Climate and Health Initiative for Caregivers and Kids) Working Group, co-led by Dr. Bob Friedlander and Maria Finnegan, Comms Director, NH Children’s Trust. We hope that previous members of the Children’s Health WG will join the CHICKs group. Ongoing programs including Climate Informed Pediatric Care will be discussed by this new group.
CHICKs has had a very successful first year, including the development of Dartmouth Health-funded climate and health after school programming for K-5 children in the Kearsarge region, as well as a resource guide on healthy housing for their parents/caregivers.
We plan to expand our after-school programming, develop a series of statewide parent climate cafes (see our NHPR story here, and additional press here), start a grassroots advocacy movement in support of decarbonization of childcare centers/K-12 schools and bus electrification, and explore additional programming to meet existing needs.
We hope you can join our introductory virtual meeting on January 4th, 2024 from 6 - 7 PM, as we need your input and participation in future programming. Nse Witherspoon, ED of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, and Anya Kamenetz, Advisor, Aspen Institute and former NPR correspondent, will be joining us. Please contact Emily for the meeting information and to join the Working Group.
Climate Justice Working Group:
Join NH’s Environmental Justice Community Leaders for monthly NH Environmental Justice Roundtable discussions to collectively discuss environmental justice activities in NH and build toward greater Environmental Justice in the state and region. These discussions will convene a broad range of advocates and community decision-makers to share information, build a network of people and organizations working on environmental justice in NH, and collectively design and support greater EJ action and movement building in the state. The next roundtable will be January 17th, 2024 - 5:30-7:00 PM. Register Here.
Communications & Education Working Group:
NH HWCA’s Speaker’s Bureau, composed of interdisciplinary healthcare workers using their trusted messenger status to give climate and health presentations to a variety of audiences around the state, has so far completed over 95 presentations to over 2,000 people. With over 10 events already lined up for 2024, we are always encouraging new speakers. To watch an introductory presentation on the Speakers Bureau, and to learn how to join, please contact Emily.
Join the Climate Health Bookworms on Wednesday, January 10th at 7:30 PM, to discuss Small Town, Big Oil by David W. Moore.
Contact Emily for the Zoom link, to be added to the bimonthly Climate and Health Bookworms mailing list, and to receive information on their bimonthly meetings.
Policy & Advocacy Working Group
The Policy & Advocacy Working Group has proposed a bill, SB496: directing the department of health and human services to establish a climate and health protection program, with Senator Shannon Chandley (District 11) as the prime sponsor. We have approached several of our affiliated organizations to assist us in supporting this bill. Stay tuned for opportunities to testify, which will likely be in January 2024.
The group is also in the process of launching a statewide climate and health survey of healthcare workers in NH, to gauge opinions and knowledge, and better inform our advocacy work. We are working with the UNH Survey Center to create the online survey. We plan to disseminate the survey through our organizational affiliates, so be on the lookout. We hope you will all participate and share with your networks of healthcare workers.
Readers are invited to join any of our working groups by contacting Emily at ethompson@nhclimatehealth.org.
The 2023 Annual Fund Campaign - We Met Our Goal!
A huge thanks to all that gave to the 2023 Annual Fund Campaign! We raised almost $29,000 surpassing our goal of $25,000. It represents nearly a 90% percent increase over what we raised last year. But more importantly, it represents a growing interest in and a belief in our mission.
The Annual Fund provides the critical operating funding we need each year to successfully run NH-HWCA. It pays for the things that grant funding often doesn’t cover. It also gives us the confidence to move forward aggressively with our 2024 agenda.
Working at the intersection of climate and health, there has never been a better time to support our health practitioners to help lead the way and take action on climate change.
Thank you for believing in our cause. Together, we can create a movement across New Hampshire to find positive solutions to the health driven climate crisis.
Rethink Plastics to Tackle Toxins
Plastic materials and items made of plastic are ubiquitous due to their convenience, high durability and strength, relatively low cost, and perceived ease of disposal. However, single-use plastics are a growing expense for local governments to manage and can be replaced, including in the medical field,[1] by long-lasting reusable items that save money and protect the environment.
Our single-use economy is extremely wasteful and polluting, undergirded by a linear take, make, waste system — producers take extracted fossil fuels; process and manufacture them into single-use plastics; and these products are eventually littered, buried in landfills or burned in incinerators. In an increasing number of states, plastic waste is chemically (not)recycled. Much of this plastic waste ends up in our waterways, with an estimate that if we do not do something before 2050 there could be more plastics by weight in the oceans than fish.[2]
In March of 2022, a historic resolution was endorsed at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) for an international legally binding agreement to address the full lifecycle of plastic – production, usage, and disposal — and to forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024.[3] The latest global meeting on plastics pollution took place in Nairobi, Kenya just last month but was disappointingly lacking in the identification of action items to move forward.[4]
Plastics contribute to three planetary crises – climate change, nature loss, and pollution. In this CHAT, we focus on the toxicity of plastics and how exposure, including low and cumulative exposure, can harm human health.
Plastics Toxicity
When plastics are made, myriad potentially harmful chemicals are used to produce plastics themselves or to give plastics properties such as coloring or flexibility. Over 13,000 chemicals are used in the production of plastic with 2300 of these identified as “chemicals of concern” because of their high toxicity and potential to migrate or be released from plastics. Chemicals of concern, which include carcinogens, neurotoxicants, and endocrine disruptors, can be released along the whole life cycle of plastics. Women and children appear to be particularly susceptible to their effects according to a 2023 UN Environment Report.[5]
Exposure to these chemicals can harm human health, potentially affecting fertility, hormonal, thyroid, immune, metabolic, and neurological activity.[6],[7] When testing for endocrine disruption from exposure to chemicals used to manufacture plastics, often the test doses are too high to evaluate the effects of chemical interaction at lower exposures on both present and future generations.[8] One vector for negative human impacts from plastics is food packaging — including plastic baby food pouches — and containers or food packaging that leach harmful substances and shed microplastics into foods at a greater rate during heating or reheating.
Plastics never go away, but rather break down into smaller microplastics that not only are composed of hazardous chemicals but also absorb, magnify, and spread hazardous chemicals such as PCBs into the environment. Microplastics act as a 'magnet' for environmental pollutants, concentrating them on their surfaces, ferrying them through our digestive tracts, and releasing them in a concentrated form, thus causing increased toxicity by a factor of 10.[9]
In New Hampshire, public health is at risk due to hazards associated with so-called “advanced recycling” or chemical recycling of plastic despite the decades long failure of these technologies to operate at scale, the high amount of energy used to create a small amount of product (typically fuel) and the large amount of toxic waste generated.[10],[11] A recent report found that typical emissions from pyrolysis (a common plastic to fuel process) include “carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)...volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chlorinated and brominated dioxins, furans (PCDD/DF, PBDD/DF)...and acid gasses, such as HCl, heavy metals, ammonia, and sulfur dioxide”.11 Public health officials should be aware of health issues in patients living near these types of facilities.
You may ask, “Can’t we just recycle plastics?” According to the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) 2022 Annual Report,[12] most plastics are not designed to be recycled. A 2022 report from Beyond Plastics, a nation-wide project out of Bennington College, and The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit organization founded by chemical engineer Jan Dell, found the current rate of recycling for all plastics to be less than 6%.[13] This includes waste exports.
Plastics’ chemical composition including the many additives used to give them specific properties such as color, non-stick properties or flexibility, makes plastics impossible to dispose of or recycle into new products without risks to public health. Calling the petrochemical industry’s plastic recycling proposals “fairy tales,” IPEN claims all recycling schemes, current or proposed, expose people and communities to toxic chemicals released into the air, land, and water. Recent reports in The Guardian share that recycled plastics can be more toxic than the products made with virgin plastic[14] and reused plastics that come in contact with foods are “vectors” for toxins.[15]
Action Steps to Break Free From Plastics
Yes, plastic pollution is a difficult problem, but we can take action on solutions. Continue to educate yourself, and your patients and clients, about ways to limit exposure to plastics and the toxicants from plastics and recycled plastics. The NH Network’s Plastics Working Group recommends reading this white paper from the Dover Plastic Reduction Group, Addressing The Global Plastics Pandemic.
In the upcoming NH legislative session, four key bills will be introduced to limit plastic pollution with its associated toxicity by addressing
• Prohibiting Items With Intentionally Added PFAS (LSR 24-2805 sponsored by Rep. Karen Ebel)
• Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging (LSR 24-3139 sponsored by Rep. Lucius Parshall),
• Container Deposit Bill (LSR 24-2793 sponsored by Rep. Sherry Dutzy)
• “Skip the Stuff” bill for providing things like takeout straws and plastic utensils only by request (HB 1207-FN sponsored by Rep. Tony Caplan).
Learn about these bills and write a letter to the editor, present in-person testimony, submit remote testimony, or schedule a constituent meeting with your legislators.
Share the following 2-page handouts from the Ecology Center, Strategies to Get Plastic Out of Your Life and the Endocrine Society, 7 Harmful Chemical Types in Plastics.
While there is growing concern about the pollution of our planet by plastic, there also is a growing commitment to solutions to address the problem, including at hospitals and medical facilities. Groups and organizations focused on reducing plastic pollution and making healthier alternatives available have proliferated. New ideas and processes show great promise in reducing plastic waste. We invite everyone to join in efforts to address the harms of plastic pollution and related toxic chemicals.
By: Kristine Baber, Ph.D., Patricia Beffa-Negrini, Ph.D., Christina Dubin, MS.Ed., M.P.P., Susan Richman M.Ed., and Cynthia Walter, Ph.D.
NH Network Plastics Working Group and Dover Plastics Reduction Group — both organizations are Beyond Plastics Affiliates
In Case You Missed It!
Listen to a panel discussion on Cancer and Climate Change, presented by Katie Lichter, MD, MPH, Resident Physician, Department of Radiology Oncology at UC San Fransisco and Principal Investigator at GreenHealth Lab, as well as Joan H. Schiller, MD, Co-Founder and Chair of the Steering Committee of Oncologists United for Climate and Health (OUCH).
Holiday CHAT Challenge!
I love the holiday season! Mostly I love family and friends and the colors and smells and people wishing each other in the stores and in the streets. I really do not love “the stuff” however and especially if it is plastic. My last NH CHAT Challenge encouraged people to use their own bags instead of plastic bags at the grocery store. Today we will combine the holidays with a continued emphasis on reducing plastics. First, I will give a nod out to some interesting happenings in countries that are doing a great job on cutting down on plastic production and use. There are so many that are doing such great things but I only have so much space so here are but a few examples.
Two countries I find very deserving of applause for their efforts (as disparate as the means may be)
1. Rwanda, which tops the list with being by far the first in the world “single use plastic free” nation with their government ban starting in 2008!
2. Second on my list is Canada, where plastics were officially declared a toxic substance (meaning in many ways it will be regulated like a hazardous waste) in May, 2021, and a ban on most single use plastic was put in place to be enforced by December, 2023.
3. Kenya also deserves applause for banning single use plastic bags in 2017, and then in 2020 prohibiting all single use plastics in parks and forests.
4. In 2018, Chile became the first South American country to ban most plastic bags. The bill originally just covered Patagonia but quickly expanded in 2019 to the whole of the country.
And now, after thinking globally, let’s act locally! Here is our Holiday Challenge!
Let’s go green for the Holidays. Choose any of the following ways to green up your holidays. Let me know what you think of these suggestions or if you have any of your own ideas and I will share them with the group in the next CHAT. Send your thoughts to me at ethompson@nhclimatehealth.org.
1. For stocking stuffers give small reusable produce bags. Here is a link to one that was rated by one source as the most durable: www.netzerocompany.com/products/cotton-muslin-reusable-produce-bags. If you live in the Lebanon area search the co-op for bags put out by the Mesh Bag Mommas! (read about them at 10Towns.org)
2. Give reusable full sized bags to your family and friends for under the tree or Hanukkah gifts. Online I found a company called Baggu, whose website talks a lot about how they are very invested in sustainability and they have some pretty cute bags that would appeal to both men and women.
3. For holiday parties and gatherings skip all single use plastics. Use paper, wood or just home dishes and utensils instead of anything plastic.
4. Avoid traditional gift wrap. It is not recyclable. Instead use brown package paper, brown paper bags or just plain newspaper. You can add some colorful twine or string and some twigs with leaves found outside for decoration.
Happy Green Holidays to everyone!
Darla Thyng, MD
Rethinking, Refusing, Reusing and only then Recycling.
Thank you so much to all supporters and volunteers of NH Healthcare Workers for Climate Action for all of your great work this year. We are so appreciative of this growing community, and look forward to hitting the ground running in 2024 and continue building a climate and health movement in the state!
Thank you as well to the corporate sponsors of NH Healthcare Workers for Climate Action, sponsoring this issue of the NH CHAT.
[1] https://upstreamsolutions.org/podcast/championing-reuse-in-healthcare
[2] Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics & catalyzing action (2017).
[3] https://www.unep.org/environmentassembly/unea5
[4] https://www.unep.org/inc-plastic-pollution/session-3
[6] https://www.endocrine.org/-/media/endocrine/files/topics/edc_guide_2020_v1_6bhqen.pdf
[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10038118/
[8] Myers, J.P. (December 15, 2022). Testimony to the U.S. Senate and Public Works Committee on Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice and Regulatory Oversight’s Hearing: Examining the Impact of Plastic Use and Identifying Solutions for Reducing Plastic Waste.
[9]Tel-Aviv University. "Microplastics increase the toxicity of organic pollutants in the environment by a factor of 10, study finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 February 2022. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220216112233.htm>.
[11] Bell, L. Chemical recycling: a dangerous deception. Beyond Plastics and International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), October 2023
[12] https://ipen.org/sites/default/files/documents/ipen-2022-ann-report_digital_small.pdf
[13] “The Real Truth About the U.S. Plastics Recycling Rate” - Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup, May 2022
[14]Recycled plastic can be more toxic and is no fix for pollution, Greenpeace warns - Damien Gayle in The Guardian, May 24, 2023
[15]Recycled and reused food contact plastics are ‘vectors’ for toxins – study - Tom Perkins in The Guardian, May 27, 2023
