Environmental Health & Air Emissions

Our Experience

The Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) has 17 years of experience working in the field of environmental health. Whether focusing our work on reducing toxic air and water emissions or decreasing the amount of GHGs released into the atmosphere, ISC's top priority is improving health of our planet, the communities we work in, and the people in those communities.

Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe

In Russia, for example, ISC has worked with hundreds of communities on projects to reverse decades of environmental degradation. The resulting 721 projects cleaned up polluted air and water, eliminated toxic waste, established 650,000 acres of Protected Natural Areas to enhance Russia's "carbon sink", and reduced annual GHG emissions by more than 52,000 metric tons.

ISC also worked in Nizhnii Tagil, one of Russia's most polluted cities, to clean up air emissions and polluted water. When we arrived in 1993, the city's cancer rates were the highest in the nation, it ranked third in respiratory diseases, ninth in skin diseases, and worst in children's health rates.

Through our eight year demonstration project, ISC prevented 1,450 tons of toxic dust per year from entering the air, saving an estimated 28 lives annually. ISC also set up a clinic for the 58% of children suffering from respiratory disease, leading to a 75% reduction in asthma attacks.

The project eliminated 700,000 cubic meters per year of water contaminated with heavy metals and provided safe drinking water in schools and hospitals serving over 16,000 people. We also made major reductions in the most hazardous air-borne pollutant "fine dust from the refining of iron ore" by creating a program designed around collaboration within the community.

Our approach in Nizhnii Tagil built off of our community-actions projects in Bulgaria and Hungary, which employed environmental priority setting and community problem solving by bringing together local government, NGOs, industries, environmental specialists, educators and citizens. In Hungary we developed a model education training program, which was then delivered in Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland.

In Ukraine, ISC produced ongoing environmental teacher training courses attended by 8,000 teachers annually and two new regional environmental curricula, including one on water quality issues for 8th graders and one on air quality issues for 6th graders.

In Nizhnii Tagil, and throughout Russia, we developed a new environmental education curriculum and delivered it to 40,000 school children, and trained 3,000 teachers.

In the Russian Far East, ISC helped local groups launch 228 environmental and social projects, engaging 50,000 people and benefitting 400,000. In Volgograd, Russia, ISC worked with the USEPA to establish the Center for Environmental Training (CET), which offered trainings on a wide-range of environmental management topics, including the "Smoke School" visible emissions course as a new air quality management tool for Russia. Our air quality research in Volgograd covered risk assessment and health, ambient air quality monitoring, air emissions inventory, low cost control measures, compliance and inspection, and legal issues. All of ISC's environmental health projects led to continuing Russian Federation programs.

China

In 2007, we turned our attention to the devastating environmental situation in China, where pollution has made cancer the leading cause of death in China, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health. A 2007 study done by the World Bank and SEPA found that hundreds of thousands of deaths each year can be tied to ambient air pollution.

Furthermore, according to Chinese environmental experts, annual premature deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution are likely to reach 550,000 in 2020, up from around 300,000 in 2007. An additional 300,000 deaths could be attributed to indoor air pollution caused by poorly ventilated coal and wood stoves or toxic fumes.

Environmental degradation is so severe that only 1 percent of China's urban population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe by the European Union, according to a World Bank study. Contributing to the poor air quality in many of China's industrial cities is China's reliance on its abundant supply of coal for about two-thirds of its energy needs. Harmful sulfur dioxide emissions from coal and fuel oil can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Particulate matter, which includes concentrations of fine dust, soot and aerosol particles, is another major pollutant.

Guangdong Province "sometimes called China's "factory to the world"" has been a driving force in the country's rapid economic growth. Guangdong is about the size of New England with seven times the population (100 million) and more manufacturing jobs than the entire United States.

The enormous output of Guangdong's manufacturing enterprises has resulted in a massive and negative impact on the region's environment and its residents. The region suffers from high rates of cancers, birth defects, and respiratory illness, and has had an increasing number of citizen demonstrations " primarily related to deteriorating environmental conditions. Guangdong is also a major source of global pollution, including acid rain, mercury, and greenhouse gas emissions.

The region's 500,000+ small and medium-sized enterprises comprise a significant portion of the world's supply chain, yet they have a very high rate of non-compliance with environmental laws and regulations compared to other regions of China. Like cities and provinces across the country, Guangzhou and Guangdong lack sufficient indigenous capacity and know how " yet there is a great demand for practical solutions.

In 2008, ISC began implementing the Guangdong Environmental Partnership (GEP) program with funding from USAID and private partners. Guangdong needed high quality training and technical assistance to meet growing demands, a greater awareness of why environmental and energy efficiency improvements are good for both business and the public's health, and practical examples to motivate skeptics to act.

The GEP program is a three-year public-private partnership program that is working to meet the following objectives:

To improve the capacity of factories and SMEs to monitor and enforce their own compliance with national and international emissions standards,"as well as with other environment, health, and safety" standards.

To strengthen local and provincial government capacity to enforce emission reduction standards and other environmental regulations and to improve governance practices in environmental management..

To provide constructive ways for citizens to transform their environmental health concerns into concrete actions to reduce GHG emissions and overall energy consumption..

To spark greater collaboration among a range of private, public, and civil sector leaders and institutions to address climate change and good governance..

Through the Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Academy and our work with the Provincial Government, ISC is providing high quality trainings on EHS management systems, pollution prevention, energy efficiency environmental enforcement, and market based incentives for environmental decision-making.

By working in pilot communities on energy efficiency projects, ISC is working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve public health while creating an economic benefit for the companies and municipalities that make the investment.

Finally, through our community work with South China Normal University and a network of pilot schools, ISC is implementing an education for sustainable development curriculum (environmental education that incorporates human needs), that focuses on environmental health and energy efficiency.

In 2009, ISC began work on another program, the US-China Partnership for Climate Action (PCA) in Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces. Through the PCA program, ISC is adding courses on energy efficiency and GHG emissions calculations and reductions to the EHS Academy's offerings. We're also working with practitioners and city leaders across both provinces on low-carbon city planning, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability. By working with government, industry, NGOs, and communities, ISC is helping reduce harmful air emissions in Chinese cities and improve public health for the generations to come.

For more information on our work in China on either the GEP or the PCA program, please visit the website here http://www.iscchina.org/what_we_do/ .