Welcome to PRHE
Our mission is to create a healthier environment for human reproduction and development through advancing scientific inquiry, clinical care and health policies that prevent exposures to harmful chemicals in our homes, workplaces, and communities.
Turning our science into action
Research
PRHE conducts groundbreaking, multi-disciplinary research that answers important questions of how chemicals and contaminants in our homes and environment affect fertility, pregnancy, and fetal and child development.
Policy
PRHE identifies and communicates how science should be used in policymaking to protect health and is a leading scientific voice on EPA’s problematic implementation of the updated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Education and Communications
PRHE is a leader in connecting the environment to pregnancy, prenatal health, and women’s health and works with major medical organizations to issue guidance on reducing chemical use and preventing harmful exposures.
Latest News
In 1953, a paper developed for cigarette maker RJ Reynolds detailed possible cancer-causing agents in tobacco, but the document would remain hidden from public view for decades. In the interim, the industry told the public: “We don’t accept the idea that there are harmful agents in tobacco.”
Companies making so-called "forever chemicals" knew they were toxic decades before health officials, but kept that information hidden from the public, according to a peer-reviewed study of previously secret industry documents.
The female employees at the DuPont chemical company’s Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, W. Va., were not given much of an explanation in 1981 when they were all abruptly moved away from any part of the factory that produced a category of chemicals then known as C8. They certainly were not told about their eight recently pregnant coworkers who had worked with C8 and given birth that year—one of them to a baby with eye defects and just a single nostril; another to a baby who had eye and tear duct defects; and a third with C8 in its cord blood.
As early as the late 1950s, tobacco companies knew that smoking could cause cancer, but they still spent decades funding scientific research to obfuscate that fact. Back in 1979, Exxon knew that fossil fuels were linked to global warming, but the oil industry disputed climate science for years. And now, a new report reveals that as early as the 1960s, the chemical industry knew that PFAS, so-called forever chemicals, had adverse health effects—and they went on to suppress that knowledge.
The water you drink has been poisoned. The same goes for the air you breathe, the soil where your vegetables grow, and the lakes where you fish. In fact, there’s likely a good amount of the poison in your body right now, making its way through your system, and the damage of which you might not see for many years.
Makers of PFAS, a class of chemicals used in everything from cookware to food containers and makeup, had evidence the substances were toxic as early as the 1970s and obscured the danger, according to a new study based on industry archives held at the University of California.
The unpleasant reality facing the anti-abortion movement is that most Americans don’t actually want to ban abortion. This explains why the pro-life summer of triumph, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, led to a season of such demoralizing political outcomes. Voters in Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky in November rejected ballot measures to make abortion illegal; just last month, in Wisconsin, voters elected an abortion-rights supporter to the state supreme court.
Environmentalists and academics who support strict chemical rules are calling on Congress to boost oversight of the TSCA program to ensure the agency is using updated and protective scientific approaches to risk assessment, mirroring industry calls for tougher scrutiny of EPA’s toxics work from the GOP-led House. During a March 29 Capitol Hill briefing organized by the University of California San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), speakers from that office and allied environmental groups urged lawmakers and their staff to raise pressure on EPA for stronger Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) implementation, while also voicing support for budget and staffing increases.
Stories from our Blog
June 08, 2023Guest Contributor
June 01, 2023Documents Library
April 27, 2023Regulatory
