Public Health Assessments and Health Consultations
Choose Safe Places for Early Care and Education: Safe Siting Program
Health Education Activities​
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Since 1989, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has funded the Health Assessment Program (HAP) to publish reports on toxic waste sites and other environmental health hazards in Pennsylvania under the Cooperative Agreement Program known as APPLETREE: ATSDR’s Partnership to Promote Local Efforts To Reduce Environmental Exposure. 

HAP publishes public health assessments and health consultation documents to help community members, health care professionals, private organizations and other government agencies understand the public health impact of an environmental health issue. Any of these entities can submit a request for a public health assessment or health consultation document to be prepared. Please see our page on Reporting an Environmental Health Concern for more information about the types of environmental health concerns our team evaluates, and the information we need in order to conduct an evaluation. HAP prepares three types of documents, described below.  

Letter Health Consultations (LHC): LHCs are short documents addressed to a specific person or group using a letter format. They are written in response to a specific public health issue or question (usually a single exposure pathway) that requires a focused and brief response.

Health Consultations (HC): HCs are longer documents addressed to a specific person or group using a report-style format. They are written in response to a specific public health issue or question (usually one or two exposure pathways) that requires a more thorough review of data. HAP reaches a public health conclusion based upon site-specific data including chemical, physical and health outcome data.

Public Health Assessments (PHA): PHAs are similar to health consultations except that they may consider multiple exposure pathways and therefore are more comprehensive, longer documents. They are always released for public comment and include a response to comments received.

All types of health consultation documents can be ATSDR-certified or state-released. A certified document is one that has been formally reviewed by ATSDR. A state-released document is one that may have been written with contributions from ATSDR but has not been revised or edited by ATSDR before publication by HAP. 

ATSDR-Certified Documents

Fact Sheets
Ethylene Oxide Fact Sheet
Ambler Mesothelioma Update
Keystone Sanitary Landfill Health Consultation
Keystone Sanitary Landfill Health Consultation – Executive Summary
BoRit Asbestos
Martin Tower Demolition
Precision National Plating Site Timeline

The Choose Safe Places for Early Care and Education (CSPECE) program helps to ensure that child care centers are located in healthy environments.  We recommend child care owners and operators take a short CSPECE voluntary survey for their child care center or as soon as they have a location in mind.  HAP and the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) have been partnering on a safe siting program for child care facilities in Pennsylvania since 2014, formerly known as Healthy & Green. View more information about the CSPECE program.

HAP provides community members, health care providers and other professionals with community environmental health education products to increase environmental health literacy. These products include information about specific types of exposures to hazardous substances, exposure routes and pathways, health effects, treatment options and how to prevent or minimize exposures to hazardous substances in the environment.

HAP’s health education activities also include participating in and hosting interactive educational events that provide community members with opportunities to talk directly with health educators and learn more about the environmental health issues that are most important to them.

Additional Links:
ATSDR Environmental Health Education: Resources for the Public