Environmental Impacts on Women

Environmental Impacts on Women

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When an environmental threat affects a community's health, most often it is women who take on these issues. Frequently they do so in isolation,

far from established conservation groups and with few resources.

Women's Voices for the Earth supports community-based women through

mentorship, leadership trainings, networking, and linking them with technical

and legal assistance - magnifying their voices into coordinated campaigns

that change the policies that allow environmental degradation to occur.

WVE focuses attention on the environmental issues directly affecting women

because while harm to our natural environment affects all of us, women and

children carry these health impacts in a unique way. Furthermore, women

possess important social and political potential to influence environmental

policy-making.

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Environmental Impacts on Women

Most chemicals used today have never been tested for their risks to human

health. Of those that have been tested, most have been evaluated for their

acute impacts to adult males. The impact of toxic chemicals on women is of

particular concern for a number of reasons. First, women are the first

environment for the next generation.

Many chemicals stored in a woman's body are passed onto her child during

pregnancy and later through breast-feeding. A 2005 study by the Environmental

Working Group revealed that at least 287 hazardous industrial chemicals

pass through the placenta to the fetus. Synthetic chemicals are so prevalent in a

woman's breast milk today that, if bottled for sale, most breast milk would not

pass FDA regulations. While studies still document that breastfeeding remains

the best option for building infant immunity, the quantity of chemicals to which

we are exposing our young is of grave concern and poses an unnecessary burden

on the developing child.

Second, many chemicals accumulate in fat and women generally have a higher

percentage of fat tissue than men. For example, in 2003, the Centers for Disease

Control reported that women, as compared to men, had significantly higher levels

of ten of the 116 toxic chemicals they tested. Three of the ten chemicals were

phthalates - a group of chemicals found commonly in health and beauty products

that are linked to birth defects.

Only one chemical tested-lead--was found in higher levels in men. We are

also seeing an increase in women's health problems related to environmental

exposure. Over the last two decades, breast cancer rates have risen from a

lifetime risk of one in 20 to one in seven.

Furthermore, minority racial populations of women bear a greater burden

of chronic diseases in the United States that have been linked with exposure

to toxic chemicals. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control

(CDC), the incidence of cervical cancer is more than five times greater among

Vietnamese women in the placecountry-regionUnited States than among

white women.

The CDC also reports that African American women are more likely to die of

breast cancer than are women of any other racial or ethnic group. And African

American, American Indian, and Puerto Rican infants have higher death rates

than white infants. In 1998, the death rate among African American infants

was 2.3 times greater than that among white infants.

Women Influencing Environmental Policy

When surveyed, women consistently rate the environment as one of their greatest

concerns - in numbers greater than men. Focus group data gathered in placeCity

Seattle in 2002 indicate that women are more concerned about dangers posed by

toxic chemicals than are men. Nationwide polling shows that women feel this

concern regardless of their political party affiliation; a majority of both Democratic

and Republican women described themselves as very concerned about chemical

pollution in our environment. Generally, women also remain the primary providers

of healthcare oversight for their families.

A poll conducted by the federal Office of Women's Health found that nearly

two-thirds of women indicated they alone were responsible for health care

decisions for their family, and 83% had sole or shared responsibility for

financial decisions regarding their family's health. We know that these are

issues that interest, concern, and motivate women.

Yet, a report from the United Nations states that women still remain

largely absent from the decision-making structure on natural resource

management, conservation, and environmental protection. There is

tremendous untapped potential for advocacy and political influence

within this constituency which WVE has sought to harness.

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