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Science and Action to Protect Public Health: How Healthcare Professionals Are Changing Chemicals Policy

January 11, 2012
1:00 pm US Eastern Time

Listen to Recording

This call hosted by CHE-Alaska was a one-hour discussion examining our broken chemical safety system and offering solutions to protect our health and the environment. Executive Director Martha Arguello of Physicians for Social Responsibility—Los Angeles (PSR-LA) was the featured speaker. Martha works at the intersections of health, the environment and social justice to advocate for effective policy change.

For the past 32 years, Martha has served in the nonprofit sector as an advocate, community organizer and coalition builder.  She joined PSR-LA in 1998 to launch the environmental health programs and became executive director in November 2007.  While working as a health educator in the 1990s, Martha had an epiphany—she realized that although early detection can prevent death from breast cancer, it does not prevent breast cancer, which has been increasingly linked to the exposure of environmental toxicants. Since that realization, Martha has dedicated her career to the environmental justice movement and has lectured nationwide on the use of precautionary principle policies.