NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy

This article traces the development of the European Centre for Occupational Health, Safety and the Environment (ECOHSE) at the University of Glasgow. ECOHSE recently has been designated a Thematic Network by the European Union which is providing administrative support through 2004. The de facto de-regulation that accompanied emergent capitalism in Eastern Europe created opportunities for exploitation of the work force. Voluntary efforts of a loose network of occupational and environmental health academics led to a series of yearly conferences to discuss these problems and the lack of research about them. Then, in 1999, a more formal organization was established at Glasgow to pursue continuity and funding. The first occupational and environmental health conference under ECOHSE was held last year in Lithuania, and selected presentations of that meeting are offered in this journal. A second ECOHSE conference will be held this fall in Romania.

More knowledgeable and trained people are needed in the area of occupational health, safety, and environment (OSHE) if work-related fatalities, accidents, and diseases are to be reduced. Established systems have been largely ineffective, with few employers taking voluntary measures to protect workers and the environment and too few labor inspectors available. Training techniques using participatory methods and a worker empowerment philosophy have proven value. There is demonstrated need for the use of education for action, promoting the involvement of workers in all levels of decision-making and problem-solving in the workplace. OSH risks particular to women's jobs are virtually unstudied and not addressed at policy levels in most countries. Trade unions and health and safety professionals need to demystify technical areas, empower workers, and encourage unions to dedicate special activities around women's jobs. Trained women are excellent motivators and transmitters of safety culture. Particular emphasis is given to train-the-trainer approaches.

Several important features of the Chernobyl disaster make it an outstanding event among the industrial accidents in the world's history. We want to draw the readers' attention to three of them: 1) Chernobyl involved severe occupational injuries and caused chronic disorders in an unprecedented number of mitigation workers; 2) the health problems in question cannot be attributed solely to the specific radiation injury in the zone¹; and 3) the Chernobyl disaster has been a unique communication (media, in particular) event in terms of its international coverage, impact, and the controversies it has generated. The purpose of this article is to trace the links between these peculiarities of the accident and to suggest a framework for relating the communication and information factors to the health condition of the people who were occupationally involved in the Chernobyl disaster mitigation. We also will propose a number of ideas about how the factors in question can be managed within the Chernobyl disaster mitigation policy, which at present is critically shaped by the post-Soviet political, economic, and cultural context.

Ernest and Leslie Rea, two farmers in their mid-fifties, contacted their local County Agricultural Extension Office in Cape May, New Jersey, regarding health problems associated with their use of pesticides. They were referred to Dr. Hamilton and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI) clinic for consultation and evaluations. They were diagnosed with chronic intoxication of organophosphate pesticides. Recommendations were made to decrease health risks in the farming operations. These included the usage of personal protective equipment while handling or applying pesticides, transportation of pesticides in a separate trailer behind the farm truck, and construction of separate storage areas for herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. A separate wash site was also constructed for use at the end of the work day. Compliance with these strategies resulted in improvements in health for both farmers.

Disputes over environmental discourse have generated divergent pathways and discordant messages over the last three decades. An examination of them becomes a study of environmentalism's roots. The workplace is shown as a hidden and often discounted arena of debate about what constitutes an environmental issue. The triumph of the productionist and limitless consumption views helped to establish a focus on environmental change as a form of consumer action. Since the 1970s though, new forms of environmental discourse and action—both community- and production-related—have sought to shift the terrain. The possibility of becoming a broader, more socially inclusive movement capable of challenging the very structure and logic of capitalist social order is possible again, including the ability to identify new strategies for action. Overcoming the work/environment divide is perhaps the most contentious question facing the future of the environmental and labor movements. New approaches, including developing a community of interests, revaluing work, and developing an ethic of place (with urban, industrial, and global forms), require that the social and the ecological become joined in the construction of a common vision. When any environmental issue can be seen as socially determined, then environmentalism's great task will be to see itself as a primary agent of social change.

This article examines the scope for strategies to build natural assets in the hands of low-income individuals and communities. Natural assets include sources of raw materials such as forests and fisheries, and the airsheds, lands, and water bodies that provide “environmental sinks” for the disposal of wastes. These resources become assets when people have rights to access their benefits. Four strategies for natural asset-building are identified: investment to increase the total stock of natural assets; redistribution to transfer natural assets from others; internalization to increase the ability of the poor to capture benefits generated by their stewardship of natural assets; and appropriation to establish rights for the poor to open-access resources. Building on the democratic principle that all individuals have equal rights to clean air, clean water, and other common heritage resources, these strategies simultaneously can advance the goals of poverty reduction, environmental protection, and environmental justice.