Executive Director’s Note for January 2026 Networker
Hand-on-heart gratitude to you for your donations to our winter fund appeal. We know these times are uncertain and yet you gave so generously when we asked. Much of our work over the past 28 years has been devoted to preventing suffering caused by environmental problems. This idea is encapsulated in the idea of the precautionary principle, which was translated from the German word Vorsorgeprinzip, a word that literally means “forecaring.” I understood it to mean preparing for a difficult future. Those of us who live in northern climates are deeply familiar with the necessity of preparing for winter, laying in supplies, getting our vehicles winterized, and knitting those mittens.
Your financial gifts help us at SEHN prepare for the difficult future so that we are ready to do the work at hand. Thank you.
In this month’s newsletter, you will see articles on our versions of forecaring as it applies to problems like the preventable harms of residential gas-fired appliances and climate-change amplified wild fires. But first I look at why some of our foundational work is proving to be, well, truly foundational.
In 2008, SEHN’s science director Dr. Ted Schettler and his co-authors made a startling claim in a landmark report: some diseases of aging, like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, were delayable and, in some cases preventable. This was a novel idea. Novel enough that the Today Show featured Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging: With a Closer Look at Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases on one of their morning television programs.
Ted was ahead of his time, at least according to the scientists who are researching Parkinson’s today. In December 2025, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment hosted a webinar that featured Dr. Ray Dorsey, co-author of The Parkinson’s Plan, with Ted providing commentary. During the webinar, Dr. Dorsey lauded Ted’s work of 18 years ago as prescient. Ted and his co-authors recognized early on that many terrible diseases like Parkinson’s were preventable.
Here is the current synopsis on Parkinson’s:
An estimated 1.1 million people in the U.S. are currently living with Parkinson's disease (PD), and this number is expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2030. Globally, more than 10 million people are estimated to be living with PD, which is now the fastest growing brain disorder in the world.
Science has long linked certain environmental contaminants to increased risk of PD, and some researchers are now making the case that this fast-growing disease may be largely preventable.
Did you catch that? Parkinson’s is the fastest growing brain disorder in the world and it is preventable.
Since 1998, when we organized the Wingspread Conference on the Precautionary Principle, prevention and precaution have been our watchwords. Just like Ted’s work on Parkinson’s, our work on the precautionary principle has come to the fore again. The precautionary principle stands for the ethical premise, the public health premise, that precautionary measures should be taken when we know enough to act. The ethic is that we are obligated to prevent the preventable suffering.
In October 2025, I had the good fortune to speak at an Environmental Health Symposium on Activating the Precautionary Principle for a Healthier Future sponsored by the Environmental Health Program at University of Northern Iowa. The context for that conference was the alarming rise of cancer in Iowa along with the dire water quality of the state. It shouldn’t take a Ph.D. and a post-doc to determine that the filthy water (and air) of Iowa might be connected to the rising cancer rate. I spoke on how to use the precautionary principle and thereby improve the health of the state. The video of that talk is available here.
Then, in December 2025, Ted Schettler gave a presentation on the precautionary principle at a meeting held by the National Academy of Sciences on the “Status of Insects in North America.” (Ted’s presentation begins at 1:23:31.) In announcing the study, the NAS made three observations:
Some insect populations are declining, for a variety of reasons. Managed insects, primarily bees that are raised by humans for their pollination services, are experiencing population declines mainly due to introduced parasites and pathogens.
Wild insects, on the other hand, face declines due to additional factors including excessive pesticide use, climate change, habitat fragmentation and loss, and resource competition.
Other insect populations, such as invasive species, may be on the rise in certain geographic areas, in part due to the declines in native populations.
Given the deep reliance of all life on insects, protecting their well-being is essential for us to flourish. We will indeed face a difficult future if they suffer further declines.
Ted and his co-authors of Environmental Threats to Health Aging put forward three premises that they said must guide our decisions and that were at the heart of preventing terrible futures of runaway cancer rates, accelerating Parkinson’s Disease, climate-driven wild fires, decimating insect populations and changing the Earth’s chemistry with plastics. These still stand as ways that we can activate the precautionary principle. They are at the heart of forecaring. Here’s what Ted and his co-authors said:
Three further premises must guide our decisions:
Human existence requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. Objective data overwhelmingly support the conclusion that human activity on the planet already exceeds that capacity and has for some time.
Organizing human existence on earth in ways that are sustainable and just and that acknowledge and respect universal human rights is both desirable and possible. In a world of intricate interdependencies, the quality of life of all people must be considered when making decisions. For example, agricultural policies that do not take into account food access and the economic security of farmers in developing countries are neither sustainable nor just. A large body of literature shows that the position of an individual, family, or neighborhood on the socioeconomic ladder is consistently a strong predictor of health. Illnesses and environmental degradation related to poverty and socioeconomic disparities have consequences for society at large, nationally and internationally.
Disease prevention should be raised to a much higher priority than is reflected in current policies that overwhelmingly direct resources toward early diagnosis and treatment. Primary prevention can have a large return on investment and can reduce the environmental and public health impacts of the healthcare industry itself.
These premises are interdependent and they are not really optional if long term human survival with lives of quality is a goal. Vast and growing numbers of the world’s population are entering a period of unprecedented challenges to health, security, and survival. No sector of society or institution can ignore these issues as they plan future activities.
Carolyn Raffensperger, Executive Director