Pure Earth

Pure Earth’s Global Lead Program has been instrumental in elevating lead exposure as a priority for action by governments, policymakers, major funders, and other national and global actors. By bringing greater visibility and increased understanding of lead exposure through the generation of new data and evidence on its prevalence, severity, and sources, and through advocacy around impacts and interventions to prevent or mitigate it, the importance of tackling lead exposure is steadily gaining traction.

Pure Earth’s Global Lead Program strategy is designed around a 5-phase approach :
1. Health Surveillance
2. Source Analyses
3. Source-specific Interventions
4. Communications
5. Institutional Strengthening

Pure Earth’s Global Mercury Program strategy focuses on decreasing mercury emissions to the environment from the main source of pollution- artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM)—and reducing human exposures with an emphasis on the most severely affected populations, namely miners and surrounding communities.

Our programs include:

- Training artisanal and small-scale gold miners in safe and profitable mercury-free mining techniques.
- Working directly with miners to safely close out old mining sites and rehabilitate degraded ecosystems through reforestation and other techniques.
- Working with the jewelry industry to solve the global issue of mercury pollution from ASGM.
- Promoting the recovery and responsible management of mercury from contaminated ASGM tailings.

The Commission on Pollution and Health is an initiative of The Lancet, the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP), and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The Commission comprises many of the world’s most influential leaders, researchers and practitioners in the fields of pollution management, environmental health and sustainable development.

The Report by the Commission on Pollution and Health will be published in The Lancet in the fall of 2017. The Report will analyze and communicate the massive scope of the health and economic costs of air, water and soil pollution. Through analyses of existing and emerging data, the Report will reveal pollution’s severe and underreported contribution to the Global Burden of Disease. It will uncover the economic costs of pollution to low- and middle-income countries, and compare the costs of inaction to the costs of available solutions. It will inform key decision makers around the world about the burden that pollution places on health and economic development, and about cost-effective pollution control solutions and strategies. The Commission will bring pollution squarely into the international development agenda.

Commission Partners

The Lancet is one of the world’s oldest and best known medical journals, publishing a weekly journal and nine monthly specialty journals in the fields of global health, diabetes and endocrinology, oncology, haematology, neurology, psychiatry, respiratory medicine, infectious diseases and HIV.

The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) is a collaborative body that facilitates the provision of technical and financial resources to governments and communities to reduce the impacts of pollution on health in low- and middle-income countries. GAHP members include World Bank, European Commission, UNEP, UNDP, UNIDO, Asian Development Bank, ministries of environment and health from around the world, and a host of civil society organizations. The non-profit organization Pure Earth (formerly Blacksmith Institute) is the Secretariat of GAHP and coordinates the work of the Commission.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is an international leader in medical and scientific training, biomedical research, and patient care. It is the medical school for the Mount Sinai Health System, which includes seven hospital campuses, and has more than 5,000 faculty and nearly 2,000 students, residents and fellows.