Health Assessment Program

Since 1989, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has funded the Health Assessment Program (HAP) to conduct environmental risk assessments on toxic waste sites and other environmental health hazards in Pennsylvania.

Health Consultations and Public Health Assessments

HAP publishes Letter Health Consultations (LHCs), Health Consultations (HCs), and Public Health Assessments (PHAs) to help community members, healthcare 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.

HAP reaches public health conclusions based upon site-specific data including chemical, physical, and health outcome data. All types of reports can be ATSDR-certified or state-released. A certified report is one that has been formally reviewed by ATSDR. A state-released report is one that may have been written with contributions from ATSDR but has not been reviewed by ATSDR before publication by HAP.

PA's Hazardous Site Related Health Consultations and Public Health Assessments (2017-Present)

For consultations and assessments prior to 2016, please contact us at dehe@pa.gov.

Health Education Activities

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 or health assessors and learn more about the environmental health issues that are most important to them.

Activities related to health assessment program are funded as part of ATSDR's Partnership to Promote Local Efforts to Reduce Environmental Exposure cooperative agreement.

For more information, please contact us at dehe@pa.gov or 717-787-3350.