Respiratory Health Association and Midwest Asbestos Information Center (of University of Illinois) create a program to train thousands of laborers in Chicago in the proper handling and management of asbestos found in Chicago office buildings. Training is designed to prepare Chicago contractors to meet the need to remove and encapsulate asbestos in buildings throughout Chicago.
Category: Clean Air Progress
Stories related to clean air.
RHA Formalizes Commitment to Legislative Advocacy
RHA formalizes its organizational commitment to play an active role in legislative advocacy as a means of achieving the prevention and control of lung disease. Eventually RHA would play a significant role in many legislative advocacy efforts, including protection of federal and state clean air legislation and the passage of smoke-free laws in Chicago and Illinois, among other locations.
Future Energy Jobs Act a Big Win
On December 1, 2016, Illinois passes the biggest clean energy bill in the country. Respiratory Health Association worked diligently for years with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition to restore Illinois’ stalled clean energy programs designed improve air quality and public health.
With this new legislation, 25 percent of Illinois’s electricity will come from clean, renewable power by 2025.
The law also vastly increases energy efficiency programs, saving Illinois ratepayers billions of dollars while cutting power from dirty coal plants and eliminating deadly air pollution in the process.
Other provisions will lead to new solar and wind power construction in Illinois that will supply nearly a million homes with clean energy by 2030.
All of these components add up to a big win for healthy lungs and clean air.
Peoria Coal Plant Told to Clean Up
A federal judge sides with a coalition of environmental and health groups, including Respiratory Health Association, in a lawsuit filed against Peoria’s E.D. Edwards coal plant alleging that the company is “emitting an excessive amount of soot pollution.”