Our Mission
Our mission is to remedy harm to human health caused by pollution — especially to vulnerable people most at risk. Our program focuses on the most polluted places in the world, where severe health disorders result from exposure to toxic chemicals.
Achieving environmental justice — bringing fairness and equal treatment to inflicted people through participation, due process, and redress — not only presents challenges to governance (legal, ethical and social) but also raises scientific questions of how to prove conclusively (either in a court of law or in regulatory settings) that particular toxic substances are responsible for health problems. We are advancing science to 'fingerprint' chemicals that are causing harm and trace them to their source. At the same time, our partners in developing countries aim to limit the health impact of pollution through governance reforms. But these efforts are not yet linked to the scientific capabilities required to verify chemical causes of harm. Our aim is to generate science-based governance interventions that will save lives and restore justice for those most harmed by pollution.
Creating Partnerships
“We very much believe that our collaboration will offer leadership at making the environment safe from chemicals and at defending people's rights to a healthful environment.”
— Joint statement by Hebei University President Le Kang and University of Birmingham’s Provost Tim Jones
Our problem-solving process involves citizens, industries, NGOs, and governments to guide our scientists, legal and public health experts & students working with affected communities. We engage with pro bono environmental justice clinics developed at universities in many countries. And we built our action research from the bottom up, beginning with the identification of critical issues for our investigations made by those needing help. Our program of risk characterization leads to the selection of appropriate interventions in each case to eliminate exposure to chemicals proven to be toxic. Interventions may range from self-regulatory mechanisms, voluntarily adopted by industries, to new environmental threshold standards implemented through government agencies or legal actions against polluters.
Our inspiration
Our mission draws inspiration from how criminal justice was transformed by the scientific discovery of DNA fingerprinting in 1984. Just one year later, an immigration tribunal appeal involving a young British boy of Ghanaian decent was resolved by the nascent technique, leading to widespread acceptance of this body of evidence in criminal legal proceedings replacing uncertainty with greater scientific precision.
Environment Care is unique in its mission to bring science and governance experts together to accelerate justice for victims of pollution by fingerprinting the harm caused by the polluters in order to hold them accountable. The aim is to help create a new global culture of accountability that is based on this vastly improved scientific opportunity for effective recourse.