Secretary’s report IDEA Annual General Meeting 21st February 2009

It gives me great pleasure to present this report of our activities throughout the year. The demands that we are putting on the ecosystems make it imperative that IDEA continues its work to highlight the links between health and the environment. Our work continues on many fronts, and we will highlight hereunder some of our work on the many issues that concern us.

Incineration
We remain completely opposed to a practice that does not acknowledge that we live on a fragile planet and that we must conserve our resources, and not feed the throwaway society which we now live in. The health impacts of incineration are outlined on our website and we remain seriously concerned at the lack of surveillance of health parameters around current industrial facilities, and biomonitoring is not established. We opposed incinerators in Rathcoole and Ringaskiddy and spoke at public meetings on the issue. A petition on this issue was accepted by the E.U. petitions committee. Our submission in the recent EPA report on the management of Hazardous Waste is acknowledged.

EMR
We are concerned at the long term impacts of EMR on the health of the general population and the short term impacts on a sub-section of the population. Our objective during the coming year is to undertake research on effects of EMR on humans. We have initiated the process by contacting two academic institutions to assist in conducting the research. We are hopeful that this may lead to research that will result in the public health community in the HSE addressing the issue. At the moment we have masts on hospitals, in direct contravention of the spirit of the Stewart report, and the precautionary principle outlined in this report.

Fluoride
We remain opposed to the addition of fluoride to the drinking water supply, and advocate brushing the teeth and reducing sugar as an approach to be adopted, and not the addition of more chemicals to our polluted world. We sent information on fluoride to the Dept of Dentistry in UCC and made a submission on fluoride to Oral Health Policy in Dept of Health

ISDE
As VP[Europe] ISDE, Philip attended a Directing Board meeting in Italy on 23 and 24 April. We had 7,000 posters on climate change and biodiversity circulated to general practitioners, and they should be circulated in the Irish Medical Times in the near future. We represented ISDE internationally at UNEP's Global Civil Social Forum and global Environmental meetings in Genveva (November), Strasbourg, France (December) and Potznan, Poland (December)

Water Framework Directive
We were represented on the Advisory Committee of the Eastern River Basin WFD. The timeframe of this committee is now at an end, and new committees will be formed after the next elections. Submissions are now needed by everyone to the management plans currently on the website of the WFD Ireland. Click on www.wfdireland.ie and public participation. We continue to maintain contact with progress through SWAN

Genetic Engineering
We are represented on the Advisory Committee of the EPA, and remain seriously concerned at the lack of testing of GM foods.

Health Care Without Harm
We are represented on HCWH. The mercury portfolio is to be distributed nationwide and hope to launch a project to withdraw mercury thermometers from pharmacies

Nuclear Energy/ Weapons
We are linked with IPPNW, and an update will follow on our activities in this regard. We remain official representative in Ireland for IPPNW. We attended an international conference in Paris on nuclear energy and co-issued a press release with all other parties and took part in a public demonstration through central Paris urging the immediate phase out of nuclear energy world wide.

Meetings
We are making progress at the recent UNEP conference, and have raised the issue of mercury, chemical safety and biodiversity and put out some suggestions on eco health and the underlying philosophy of ecosystems. We stressed the importance of health impact assessments being undertaken and not being developer led. We also addressed meetings organized by other agencies, for example, formal meetings such as the Irish Forum for Global Health on ‘Global Health Challenges: Environment, Hunger and Diseases of Poverty’ in UCC, the Green Gathering, a Climate Change Conference in Cork and smaller EMR and anti-incineration meetings, and we were also represented at Terre Madre International Slow Food Event, Waterford (on GM food crops), and the AGM of HEAL in Brussels. Members hosted one of IDEA's patrons, Dr. Declan Kennedy, from Germany to discuss possible networking links with the global GAIA university. In addition, members addressed students in UCC Public Health students' classes and TCD Global Health MSc class. We also addressed the Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in the framework of its work, a "Conference on Environment and Health: Indoor Pollution and Multi System Illnesses", in Strasbourg. The aim of the Conference was to hold an exchange of views with experts having experience in the relationship between environment and health and to contribute to the preparation of the report by Mr Huss (Luxemburg) on "Environment and health: better prevention of environment-related health hazards"). We were represented at the European Academy for Environmental Medicine's Autumn Congress on Multisystem Illnesses, Wurzburg, Germany.

Climate change
We circulated a CD on Contraction and Convergence widely. The Minister for Education stated that she will follow up our idea to ask transition year students to measure their carbon footprint. We had article on climate change and water-related disease published in the Irish Medical; Journal. We supported the concept of climate neutrality and to reducing CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050. We chaired working group discussions work with Irish government and NGO's to help embark on a viable Climate Neutral approach, and are trying to advise and guide Cork/Ireland to be part of UNEP's initial global Climate Neutrality Network. Members attended conference Royal College of Physicians London and signed up as member of the Climate & Health Network.

We welcome the references that the Irish Medical News and the Irish Medical Times make to our work and the issues that we raise, and we encourage all members to send relevant information to the medical and lay press. We cooperate with Chase, CND, Fluoridefree Ireland, and other groups as our resources allow. However, we urgently need more members to help in our work.

Dr Elizabeth Cullen Secretary 21 February 2009