In March 2022, environmental justice groups in South Africa secured a landmark judgment in a case pertaining to air pollution that has far-reaching consequences for human rights and for air pollution management in South Africa.

Beginning with the first US Surgeon General’s report in the early 1960s, health professionals gradually assumed a leading role in reducing tobacco’s impact on public health.

The Health of Towns Association in Britain, established in 1844 and composed of health professionals and politicians, is an early example of a public health pressure group.

In 1996, a nonprofit coalition, Health Care Without Harm, was created to educate and mobilize the health care sector around the links between a healthy environment and healthy people.

Like many occupational diseases, the coal industry’s representation of Pneumoconiosis (black lung disease) was rooted in mischaracterization, denial and lies.

The images of nurses protesting outside the White House demanding protective gear to fight COVID-19 in 2020 takes us back a century to a time when nurses joined protests at the White House as part of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

The Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) started the aerial spraying of endosulfan over the cashew plantations in the hills around Padre village in Kasaragod district in 1978.

In recent history, Australia has had a reputation as a “climate laggard”. The 2022 election was the most significant shift in Australian climate politics in a decade.

Growing out of the Medical Committee for Civil Rights, which organized the medical contingent of the March on Washington in 1963, the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) was created by a group of doctors led by American physician Robert Smith in 1964.

In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. The move was meant to save money. The city, which faced a $30 million budget deficit, had been paying for water supplied through Detroit’s municipal system.

In 1985, a mere five years after its formation, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) had over 135,000 members in 40 countries, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and had accelerated its agenda to the scope of global concern.