Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families

A national effort to protect families from toxic chemicals.

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.

Entries by Liz Hitchcock

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In time of coronavirus, is E.P.A. giving polluters a free pass?

As we all navigate the rapid changes and uncertainty of this challenging time, the need to keep our social distance has certainly altered the way we work—but it has not changed the urgency of the work that we do to protect Americans’ health from toxic chemicals.

If anything, we know it’s now more important than ever – people whose immune systems are compromised because they are suffering from cancers and other underlying illnesses that have been connected to toxic chemicals (like PFAS) are among the most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

But we heard loud and clear last week: the Trump administration is not letting up on its anti-regulatory agenda during the pandemic.

Protecting communities from forever chemicals: ‘Anybody can do this.’

Sometimes you hear something that stays with you all day. During a Washington Post Live panel with filmmaker and actor Mark Ruffalo, and Rob Bilott, the attorney who is the real-life hero who Ruffalo plays in his new movie Dark Waters, Clean Cape Fear founder Emily Donovan caught my attention when she said, “I would like to point out that we have an actor, a lawyer, and a Sunday school teacher sitting here today. Anybody can do this. Anybody can do this. Anybody can learn about these chemicals.”