Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families

A national effort to protect families from toxic chemicals.

About Us

We fight for strong chemical policy, work with retailers to phase out hazardous chemicals, and educate the public about ways to protect our families from toxic chemicals.

Our mission

  • Policy: Strong federal and state policies to protect the public from toxic chemicals.
  • Retailers: Transform the marketplace through corporate policies to substitute safer chemicals for those known to be toxic.
  • Education: A public that can use its power as citizens and consumers effectively.

Our coalition

We work in coalition with hundreds of organizations and businesses. Our coalition is united by our common concern about toxic chemicals in our homes, workplaces, schools and products we use every day.

Our founder

Our organization was founded in 2009 by environmental health trailblazer Andy Igrejas. Andy built a diverse coalition of hundreds of organizations and businesses that worked together to reform our nation’s broken chemical safety system, which resulted in Congress’s 2016 update to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). He conceived our Mind the Store campaign as a tactic to drive the chemical industry to the table in our fight for this reform for fear of losing market share at retail. Andy passed away in 2018 and we miss him dearly. Our staff and coalition partners honor his legacy by carrying on this work.

Our accomplishments

Learn about some of our successes.

Our headquarters

641 S St NW, 3rd Flr
Washington, DC 20001

Email us.

Our staff

Liz Hitchcock

Liz Hitchcock

Director

Liz Hitchcock is Director of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families. She oversees staff, coordinates our work with partner organizations, and manages the campaign’s advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill and at EPA and other federal agencies. She joined the campaign after four years as the public health advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In that capacity, she led U.S. PIRG’s campaigns on environmental health issues including product safety, chemical policy reform, chemical facility security and food safety. She coordinated PIRG’s successful campaign to win landmark federal standards for toxic lead and phthalates in children’s products in the 2008 reform of Consumer Product Safety Commission and was PIRG's lead lobbyist on the food safety campaign that resulted in the 2010 passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Prior to becoming public health advocate, she served as U.S. PIRG's Communications Director for eleven years, working with the state PIRGs' advocacy and field staffs to educate the national and local media on such issues as product safety, clean water, toxic chemical accidents, safe energy alternatives and air pollution. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and a native of Schenectady, NY.

Posts by Liz Hitchcock

Mike Schade

Mike Schade

Mind the Store Campaign Director

Mike Schade is the Mind the Store Campaign Director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families where he coordinates a national U.S. campaign challenging the nation’s leading retailers to transform the marketplace away from hazardous chemicals and towards safer alternatives. For the previous nine years, Mike was the Markets Campaign Coordinator with the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), a national environmental health organization where he led national campaigns to phase out PVC plastic, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and dioxin in consumer products and packaging. Prior to CHEJ, he was the Director of the Buffalo office of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC), a NY statewide grassroots environmental health organization. Mike lives in Brooklyn, NY where he serves on the Newtown Creek Superfund Community Advisory Group (CAG), the Board of Directors of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), and the Community Advisory Panel of the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund.

Posts by Mike Schade

Beth Kemler

Beth Kemler

Mobilization Director

Beth Kemler is the Mobilization Director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. She has been organizing public interest campaigns for fifteen years, focusing on both policy and markets-based campaigns. Most recently, she served as the Virginia Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, leading a team that got bills for climate solutions passed and exposed the commonwealth's top climate-polluting companies. Before that, Kemler worked on Oceana's successful campaign on mercury in seafood and organized students with Free The Planet! and the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group. Her professional organizing career started in college when she was a door-to-door canvasser in her hometown of Philadelphia.

Posts by Beth Kemler

Jen Dickman

Jen Dickman

Senior Program Associate

Jennifer Dickman is a senior program associate for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Before joining the campaign, she interned for the Democratic Staff of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, where she mainly assisted with projects related to federal chemical policy reform. Jennifer first worked on chemical policy several years ago as an intern with the Environmental Working Group. She has also worked for a small consulting firm researching energy issues and monitoring electricity auctions. Jennifer holds a law degree with a concentration in environmental law from the University of Maryland School of Law and a bachelor of science in chemistry from the University of Delaware.

Posts by Jen Dickman