Canadian IJC Commissioner Henry Lickers authored this article for the fall 2020 edition of the Lakes Letter, a publication of the International Association for Great Lakes research. It’s reprinted here with permission. See also, the IJC’s series on Indigenous Knowledge.
Human Health
If picturing images of the natural world helps us to relax and recharge, imagine what a walk in a local park or along a Great Lakes shore can do for us.
Environmental quality is a determinant of personal and public health, which is one reason why the IJC is advised by a Health Professionals Advisory Board. For Indigenous peoples, environmental health is linked to far more than personal and public health.
Now more than ever, it’s time to embrace binational cooperation to ensure that the waters and people of the Great Lakes basin are healthy.
This broadcast will be live from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET Thursday, December 10, 2020. The broadcast will be available on-demand at this link immediately afterwards. For the report and more information visit ijc.org/en/2020-TAP-Report.
The IJC’s first Triennial Assessment of Progress report was released in November 2017, as well as a Highlights report, a Technical Appendix and a Summary of Public Comment Appendix.
The International Joint Commission's 2020 Second Triennial Assessment of Progress (TAP) Report on Great Lakes water quality.
The classic adage of toxicology is that “the dose makes the poison” – a phrase that captures the idea that everything has a threshold between safe and unsafe.
As a microbiologist at Michigan State University and member of the IJC Health Professionals Advisory Board, I spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between our water and our health.