Section I: Introduction
Purpose of this Handbook
How this Handbook was produced
Selecting Case Studies
Summary of Key Lessons
Percy, a member of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade is taking
an air sample near a polluting factory.
Section II: About Community Monitoring
Why community monitoring?
What is community monitoring?
Health effects of selected chemicals
An Interview with Dr. David Carpenter
Section III: Community Monitoring Case Studies
Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), St. Lawrence Island
Community against Pollution (CAP) of Anniston, Alabama, PCB Contamination from Monsanto
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) Bucket Brigades, Contra Costa County, California
Pesticide Exposure and Childhood Development in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico
Phthalates: Body Burden and Product Testing
San Diego Environmental Health Coalition Health Surveys in San Diego Communities
State University of New York and the Akwesasne Community, PCBs in Breast Milk in the
Akwesasne Mohawk
West Oakland Neighborhood Groups and The Pacific Institute, West Oakland Indicators Project
Appendix A: Survey
Purpose of this Handbook
This handbook is intended as a resource for communities interested in conducting or already
engaged in monitoring projects. The handbook showcases the energy and ingenuity
displayed by community groups across the country incorporating monitoring into their
campaigns.
The handbook is designed to help communities determine which monitoring method is best
for a particular campaign, and where to find more information. By explaining how various
types of monitoring have been effectively used to support a range of campaigns and
community-based efforts, the handbook will help other communities build on these
experiences and choose the right monitoring tools.
How this Handbook was produced
This handbook was produced through the generous support of Coming Clean. Coming Clean
is a network of groups and individuals whose common goal is to work together on chemical
policies and campaigns to protect public health and the environmental from exposures to
harmful and unstudied chemicals. Information about Coming Clean can be found on the web
at (http://www.comeclean.org/homecc.htm).
Coming Clean serves as an incubator for these campaigns and strategies. Coming Clean was
formed in early January 2001 to take advantage of the tremendous public education
opportunity provided by the PBS broadcast of Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report. Bill Moyers'
groundbreaking 90 minute documentary reported on how the chemical industry has
produced thousands of man-made chemicals that have not been tested for their effect on
the public's health and safety. The campaign involved reaching out to and assisting health
and environmental groups around the country to organize events around the Trade Secrets
broadcast.
The campaign's efforts led to over 120 public viewing events and more than 650 news
articles around the country on Trade Secrets and associated local activities. Trade Secrets
provided a tremendous opportunity to focus national attention on the chemical industry and
the myriad ways that it works to keep its products on the market and safe from public
scrutiny of possible health effects.
Why Community Monitoring?
Communities across the United States and around the world are documenting chemicals and
their impacts on the health and environment of the community. This community monitoring,
which is often done in the context of specific local campaigns, can be time and resource
intensive. Why go to this trouble?
An ominous combination: a playground with a chemical or petroleum facility in the
background in Norco, Louisiana
Unfortunately, millions of people in this country and hundreds of millions around the world
live in environments severely damaged by historical and ongoing contamination of the soil,
air, and water. These contaminants adversely impact our health and accumulate in our
bodies, homes and workplaces, shortening the lives of community members, and impairing
childrenâs health and development. Many products sold in our stores pose a substantial risk
to those who use them, and there are inadequate safeguards to protect consumers. There
are literally thousands of lakes and rivers where the fish are not safe to eat, and even fish
caught in the open ocean are contaminated by the deposition of pollutants like mercury
transported long distances from their source.
In the face of these problems, communities have refused to remain passive and wait for
outsiders to assess and fix the problems. They demand change and have mobilized to
collect the information necessary to convince decision-makers, manufacturers, and the
courts that change must occur now.
What is Community Monitoring?
Community monitoring is a locally-based process of documenting chemicals or their effects
in a given community. There are a variety of approaches to monitoring, each with strengths
and weaknesses that need to be assessed by community members considering a monitoring
project. This handbook presents case studies representing six types of community
monitoring, with some projects including elements of more than one type. The six types of
monitoring are:
Monitoring Chemicals in the Environment - Direct measurement of releases or ambient
of concentrations of chemicals or pollutants in the environment.
Monitoring Chemicals Contained in Products or Food - Documentation of known or
suspected toxic chemical substances contained in commercial products or of hazards
associated with the use of commercial products.
Monitoring Body Burden - Measurement of chemicals or pollutants in people's bodies.
Monitoring Human Health - Measurement of human health indicators or patterns of
disease.
Monitoring Regulatory Performance - Monitoring the performance of both public and
private organizations responsible for enforcing regulation designed to protect health or the
environment.
Monitoring Ecological/Biological Health and Effects - Documenting the impacts of
chemical pollutants on living organisms.
Monitoring of Hazardous Incidents - An acutely hazardous incident poses an immediate
threat to human or ecological health.
Selecting Case Studies
Working with partner groups around the country, we identified several examples of the six
types of community monitoring described above. In selecting case studies, we attempted to
geographically cover the United States and demonstrate the diversity of methods employed.
Only a few of the hundreds of effective community projects are profiled here. We primarily
feature projects that are designed and driven by local communities. A few of the highlighted
projects have a low level of community involvement, but were included because they
employ unique or interesting methods that may be useful to other communities.
After gathering readily available information about each project, we interviewed contacts to
collect additional and more in-depth information. We attempted to collect the same
information for each case study, using the survey in Appendix A. Each case study is
presented in a similar format to make it easier to compare and contrast different cases.
Each case study begins with a brief overview of the project to help guide the reader to areas
of most interest.
Summary of Key Lessons
Monitoring tools employed in the case studies range from fairly simple and low-cost
methods to those that are expensive or require a significant investment in training and
capacity-building. Creating community maps illustrating the scope and patterns of health
problems in a community is a low-cost tool that doesnât require much training. It is also
relatively inexpensive to administer a community health survey to provide data for a
mapping project, but this can be very time consuming and may require training as survey
and questionnaire design can be a complicated task. Other tools, such as monitoring toxins
in breast milk, are both expensive and highly technical, and require either contracting or
partnering with a scientific laboratory. Collecting environmental samples with simple tools
such as those used by the "bucket brigades" does not require much technical training or
expertise, but does depend on highly effective community organizing and coordination.
Some of the monitoring methods discussed in this book are so powerful that they require
additional consideration and sensitivity. Testing humans for toxic chemicals (in blood, urine,
breastmilk, etc.) can provide the ultimate proof of chemical exposure, and can be an
extremely valuable tool for a community to use. However, knowing one's own chemical
body burden can be an emotionally experience. Some participants in such monitoring
studies have felt disempowered or deeply disturbed when they learn about their own
chemical body burden, especially when that part of their body burden made up of those
chemicals known to take up long term residence in the fatty substances in oneâs body,
because there is very little known about how to remove such chemicals. Counseling before
and after testing helps participants cope with the knowledge of these chemicals in their
bodies. Confidentiality in such cases is also important to avoid the results influencing health
insurance of participants or inappropriate use of the data in legal battles.
There will be disadvantages to any type of monitoring. Government agencies and/or
industry may seek to discredit community monitoring data or try to contradict it with their
own information. Researchers or research institutions involved in a project may have goals
that differ from the community's goals. The challenges are many but with proper planning,
good partnerships, and a motivated community, monitoring can be a powerful tool.
Networking with other communities that have overcome the many challenges involved will
greatly strengthen any monitoring effort. We strongly encourage communities that are
considering monitoring to learn directly from groups who have performed similar studies in
the past.
In compiling this handbook we have drawn on the experience of activists, community
organizers, researchers, and policy advocates around the country. Two recurring themes
emerged as fundamental lessons for community monitoring. First, that the most successful
and long-lived projects are those that have the greatest degree of community involvement
through all phases of the project. Second, the most successful campaigns included
monitoring as a part of a broader strategy, including components like community
mobilization, education and capacity building, technical information and research, legal
strategies or media campaigns.
Newspaper Ad produced by Environmental Working group in the campaign to get arsenic
out of pressure-treated wood products.
Appendix A: Survey
The following survey was used by participants in each of the projects profiled.
Case Study Name ___________________
BASIC DATA
1. What geographical area was the focus of your monitoring project?
2. What kind of monitoring tools or techniques did you use?
3. What kinds of chemicals did you look for?
a. Did you carry out any preliminary research but consulting Centers for Disease Control or
other government agency information?
b. Are there particulat population(s) at risk (age-stratified, racial / ethnic groups, class /
income?)
c. Has there been government testing?
d. What is the generally accepted exposure route for this chemical:
e. What are the health or environmental effects / risks from exposure
4. Who conducted the monitoring? (community groups, independent research labs, policy
institutes, universities?)
5. What is the goal of monitoring effort/campaign (immediate, long term)? (Are there corporate or
government targets?)
THE SPECIFIC EFFORT / PROJECT
6. Background context of monitoring effort:
a. How did community become aware of problem?
b. How and where this movement began?
c. What are the concerns of the community ? How did community become mobilized? Any
particular triggers?
7. Methods employed (be as detailed as possible)
8. Research Process:
a. How did community design research / monitoring effort / what part did community play in
formulating research questions? Research design? Data gathering? Analysis? Interpretation?
Dissemination?
b. How did partner agency / organization (if any) design research / monitoring effort / what
part did agency / organization play in formulating research questions? Research design? Data
gathering? Analysis? Interpretation? Dissemination?
9. What are the Data / Results / Findings of study?
FOLLOW-UP:
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Is the resulting monitoring data available to public?
How have local residents responded?
How have local businesses responded?
Have there been legal / policy changes?
Is the community still mobilized, do community organizations still exist, is there local activism?
Is the specific monitoring effort still ongoing?
What are the other outcomes? (of study, of mobilization, of legal suit or policy campaign)
INTERNAL PROJECT EVALUATION
17. If another community organization wanted to replicate this project, how easy or hard is it?
What sorts of commitments?
a. How much work was required to get data in terms of hours?
b. What kinds of factors affected data collection? Example: environmental / outside factors that
affect data collection like precipitation, seasonality, fish migrations, traffic congestion and rush
hour commutes)
c. What kind of technical expertise did you need to to design your project? To carry out data
gathering? To carry out data analysis? To interpret data?
d. How much did the project cost in terms of equipment or testing samples?
e. What sorts of community knowledge contributed to the monitoring effort?
18. In hindsight, what would have done differently? What do you think were your keys to success?
What advice to other communities who want to do a similar study?
19. How difficult was it to translate technical knowledge into lay language and concepts? What
steps were involved?
20. How difficult was it to translate study results into health recommendations? What kinds of
policy recommendations emerged from your project? How was it done? Who made the decisions?
21. Are there next steps or follow up work?
22. Contact information or web links.