1.0 ATSDR's Mission
Introduction to the Mission Section
What if
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you discovered that your home and the homes of your neighbors were
built on land that had been used as a landfill
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you learned that an abandoned manufacturing plant next to the town
water supply had used harmful chemicals?
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You'd want someone to investigate whether there are harmful chemicals
in the community. And if there were, you would want to know if people
could get sick from contacting those chemicals.
You might call your local public health department about your concerns.
And the department might contact the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry (ATSDR), the federal public health agency created to help prevent
or reduce human exposure to harmful chemicals from toxic waste sites or
uncontrolled releases into the environment.
ATSDR will investigate the concerns and determine whether further action
is needed. A public health assessor might come to your neighborhood to
conduct public health assessment activities in the community.
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To learn more about ATSDR and get an overview of the process the
agency would follow in conducting a public health assessment in
your community, click through this section
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Takes about 515 minutes.
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