Environmental illnesses

The Push to Prescribe: Women & Canadian Drug Policy discusses the complexity surrounding women and pharmaceuticals and uses the best evidence to argue for changes that better reflect women's needs in public health policy and that ensure those who are best suited to make these determinations are included in policy-making.

This chapter looks from a public health perspective at the trace amounts of pharmaceuticals and personal care products that have been detected in Canadian water, with particular attention to women’s relationship to this issue.

The Push to Prescribe, edited by Anne Rochon Ford and Diane Saibil and published by Women’s Press, is available at your local bookstore or can be ordered online at www.cspi.org.

This chapter is being made available by National Network on Environments and Women's Health. Please note that this chapter is for individual use only and distribution is prohibited.

A website that seeks to contribute to the dialogue around Canadian water policy through water research that affects women and their health. Women have historical and traditional ties and spiritual relationships with water. In this way, water is of central importance to health broadly-defined (i.e. not just physical health). However, often women are not specifically studied or physical effects on women are measured in relation to the health of their unborn and new babies. This website will explore the gendered risks to women in a country where access to safe water is often taken for granted.

Presenter Sharyle Patton explores the uses of biomonitoring – the testing of one’s body for chemical exposure – and looks at how the experience of knowing one's body burden (the total amount of chemicals present in the human body at any given time) can help inform personal choice and political engagement. While the findings from biomonitoring may be devastating to some on an individual level, Patton suggests that if the information is used with sensitivity and respect for tradition, it can be quite powerful in helping groups work for change in toxic chemical policy. A storyteller, Patton illustrates her message with the experiences of women she has encountered through her work.

A five-year national study (currently in progress) of the impacts of exposure to environmental chemicals, heavy metals and tobacco smoke on pregnant women, fetuses and infants that is part of the Government of Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan. 

A book that offers cancer prevention solutions for everyone from individuals to big business to labour to government. Contains practical tools for parents, youth and NGOs.

The Breast Cancer Fund commissioned ecologist and author Sandra Steingraber to write The Falling Age of Puberty — the first comprehensive review of the literature on the timing of puberty — to help us better understand this phenomenon so we can protect our daughters’ health.