Washington, D.C. — EPA now offers an environmental health page on its Spanish Web site. The new page discusses health and environmental issues associated with asthma, mold and indoor carbon monoxide — in Spanish. The portal is part of the agency's continuing expansion of outreach to the Hispanic community.

 

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The Hispanic environmental health page, El Medio Ambiente y Su Salud, focuses on the agency's overall efforts to educate Hispanics, researchers, and health care providers on how environmental health issues affect the different Hispanic communities throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. The page is updated regularly with new information on developments and policy. For example, the page currently includes information on indoor carbon monoxide and soon will be updated with information on carbon monoxide outdoors.

In 2005, EPA translated and posted more than 60 agency news releases on the Hispanic Web site. In addition, the agency's program offices have developed a wide variety of Spanish-language outreach materials. Among these are a toolkit entitled "Ten Steps to a Healthier, Safer and More Beautiful Community", designed to assist community leaders in raising environmental awareness among foreign-born Spanish-speakers. The toolkit contains various templates and a curriculum designed for teachers of English as a second language, using environmental terms and concepts as part of the English lessons.

Important information was provided to Spanish-speaking residents in the areas affected by last year's hurricanes. The Hispanic portal provided radio public service announcements (PSAs) and fact sheets warning of the potential environmental and health hazards posed by hurricanes as well as useful information on what residents needed to know to protect themselves upon returning to their homes and businesses in hurricane impacted areas. Due in large measure to the environmental health information related to the hurricanes, the Spanish language portal logged more than 17,000 visitors during the month of November 2005 alone.

EPA's future plans for Hispanic outreach include additional Spanish language Web pages and community forums to discuss health and environmental issues.