Since its founding in 1977, HEAL has functioned as an education and information service for people with environmental sensitivities, including allergy, asthma, and “chemical susceptibility (Theron Randolph’s term)” or MCS (multiple chemical sensitivities). The Human Ecologist has always served as the principle means by which HEAL has communicated information to its members and to the public. HEAL has provided services to thousands of people seeking information about chemical risk identification and reduction. Most important is that we can let you know that you are not alone with your concerns. However, HEAL's resources are limited and we do not include consultation services, nor can we advise about treatment as we are not healthcare professionals.

HEAL provides a variety of services for you;

The Human Ecologist, the flagship publication of the Human Ecology Action League, Inc. (HEAL)
Brochures/flyers explaining chemical sensitivities - available in quantity.
HEAL’s Service List (information, resources, reading list, directories, “Fragrance and Health”, etc.)
HEAL Chapters and Regional Support Service Project (RSS) - a network of Volunteers who provide information and support at the local level; Leadership guidance for HEAL Chapters and Regional Phone Volunteers

When the first issue of the magazine was published in 1979, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration were fairly new federal agencies. The impact of modern environmental exposures on human health was just beginning to be recognized. The phase-out of lead from gasoline had begun, DDT and PCBs were recently banned, residents of Love Canal, New York had just left homes poisoned by industrial pollution, and the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor would soon have a near-catastrophic melt-down.

The first issue of the magazine (sixteen pages in a paper cover) contained most of the elements of the today’s Ecologist. Feature articles covered an issue of lasting importance to people with MCS — building materials, indoor air quality, and human health — but which was then unknown to most people, including federal regulators. There was a column of news items similar to today’s “Home health,” one similar to “Pest Control Update” and two resembling “Policy Watch” (one was devoted exclusively to EPA activities). There were letters and book reviews, also.

Over the years, The Human Ecologist has undergone changes in personnel and design, but has remained uniquely responsive to the needs of the environmentally sensitive, and consistently ahead of the national awareness of environment and health issues. Articles on organic food and farming, indoor environments and related exposures, disability issues, medical awareness and treatment, social and medical recognition of MCS, least toxic pest control and pesticide pre-notification, fragrance “everywhere,” tobacco smoke and public access, least toxic dental materials — all have been covered repeatedly in the magazine through the decades.

Concern for the health of veterans of U.S. conflicts has remained consistent throughout The Human Ecologist’s history. In the 1970s the cold war was at its height. However, HEAL was at the forefront of organizations that recognized a connection between health effects and exposures experienced by U.S. troops in the field. In some cases, the exposures were shared by both military and civilian populations. In the 70s, dioxin was the shared exposure: Vietnam veterans began to manifest illnesses as a result of their exposures to dioxins in the defoliant Agent Orange, and civilians began to worry about dioxins in domestically used pesticides, in combustion products, and in the air and food supplies. These concerns continue to this day. In the 1990s, Gulf War troops experienced exposures to oil well fire smoke, petroleum, pesticides, the organophosphate nerve agent Sarin, and the drug pyridostigmine bromide, while at home, civilians were exposed to organophosphate and other pesticides, and combustion products.

New problems have arisen to replace some of those that plagued early HEAL members. “Less toxic” pesticides have replaced organochlorine and some organophosphate pesticides, but hazardous community pest control practices are an increasing problem, and improper pesticide use is still common. Agricultural pesticide use is still high, and now there is concern about the effects of genetically modified foods as well. Although antibiotics are not as intensively used in dairy, meat and poultry production as they were in the 1970s, dairy products, meat, and poultry contaminated with resistant microbes are now problematic, and there are new concerns about synthetic hormone residues in milk, and the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”) through the food supply.

There is no lead in gasoline now, but its replacements have caused new problems (MTBE in water, aldehyde air pollution from ethanol combustion). Although mold exposures have always troubled allergic and chemically sensitive people, indoor mold problems created by moisture, tight building practices, and poor ventilation have become more common and widely-recognized. Although unscented cleaning and personal care products are much easier to obtain now than they were in the 1970s, scented products remain the norm in society, and still create barriers to the sensitive in homes, the workplace, houses of worship, and other places where people gather.

When HEAL was a new organization, there was little environmental regulation of industrial pollution. This has changed radically over the years, but regulations are still slow to respond to newly identified, non-cancer risks. Regulations still mostly focus on materials one at a time, although exposures are usually mixed. Regulations often still focus on the highest level of substances that do not directly cause cancer or birth defects, and generally ignore the effects of the low-level exposures and mixed exposures that characterize daily life.

Today we face new environmental threats, from malicious chemical, radiological, and biological attack, from ill-advised regulations, and from chemical and biological innovations that are not completely understood. The Human Ecologist will continue to follow these new concerns, as well as those long-standing issues that remain problematic for the environmentally sensitive. A short essay of this kind can’t sufficiently acknowledge the contributions the editors, publishers, advertisers, and the many volunteers who worked (and still work) tirelessly to bring The Human Ecologist to you. The names and faces have changed over the years, but the work has stayed the same — to make The Human Ecologist a reliable, useful information source for people with environmental sensitivities.

We hope that you will join our organization, and be a part of HEAL's efforts in educating those who are unaware of the potential dangers to human health and in educating those who are suffering after harmful chemical exposures.

Additional Information and more see:
Join HEAL click here
HEAL’s Service List click here
The Human Ecologist Back Issues Article Index click here
The Human Ecologist Back Issues Column Topics click here

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"Since 1977, education and information about environment and health."

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