Credit: 2010 USCG CPO Patrick Kelly. BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

We focus on some of the most common pollutants in our society – oil and oil-based chemicals – and communities most at-risk from daily exposures or exposures from industrial releases or spills.

By aiming to prevent the debilitating chronic diseases that plague those most at risk, our work contributes to building public awareness and passing stronger laws to protect everyone, everywhere, from toxic oil-chemical exposures.

The ALERT Project is a project of Earth Island Institute, a nonprofit organization incorporated under the laws of California. Earth Island’s mission is to support environmental action projects and build the next generation of environmental leaders to achieve solutions to environmental crises threatening the survival of life on Earth.

Earth Island Institute acts as fiscal sponsor for the ALERT project.

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Our Strategies

Trainings

We strengthen environmental justice leadership by working collaboratively to reduce toxic exposures from oil-chemical activities in frontline communities. Our trainings bring accessible science on the health risks and symptoms of oil-chemical pollutants and empower people to reduce toxic exposures in their community from daily oil industry activities to oil-chemical spills.

Our Trainings

Science, Research & Public Education

We make science and medical research accessible to the people through our public talks, workshops, science-based educational materials, reports and media. We report on the latest oil-chemical explosions and spills to build public awareness of the health risks and ways to reduce those risks, and we debunk industry reports with hard facts and independent science.

Our Database

Litigation with our Allies

We use litigation as a last resort to force policy change. Sometimes we have to call out the government for dereliction of duties to ensure that laws are upheld, changed, or enforced to reduce and protect people from oil-chemical exposures.

Our Legal Actions

Health and Science: Oil-chemical Exposures and Chemical Illnesses

We design science-based programs with people

We work with people who have experienced illnesses from exposures to oil-chemical pollutants, who live in petrochemical-producing regions or have been directly harmed by large oil spills or industrial disasters, or who have academic or medical training in health fields.

We make science accessible

Our programs train people to recognize symptoms of chemical exposures and communicate with their health provider for proper diagnosis and treatment of chemical illnesses.

Environmental Justice: Tribes and Frontline Communities

*Photo: Angela Spotts, 2017.

We respond to calls from Tribes and communities where people have been sickened by oil-chemical activities including spills or might become sickened by proposed oil-chemical activities.

Before

Before oil and gas infrastructure development or inevitable disasters, we collaborate to strengthen local efforts to minimize health harm from dirty energy development and to advance clean energy solutions.

During

During oil spills or chemical plant disasters, we suggest ways that people might best protect themselves, their loved ones, workers, and their communities from exposures to the oil-chemical release and the disaster response products, like dispersants, which can create more harm than the oil alone.

After

After disasters, we continue to work in and with communities to document and minimize long-term health harm and advocate science- and evidence-based policy changes to better protect the health of workers and families.

The Law: Oil Spill Preparation and Response Planning

*Photo: 2010 US Coast Guard CPO William McAnally. BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Reforming oil spill policy with science

In 2023, driven by ALERT’s lawsuit, the Environmental Protection Agency published new rules governing dispersant use. The new rules will eliminate the most toxic products in December 2025. The manufacturer of Corexit dispersant “voluntarily” discontinued its products rather than report the now proven human health impacts.

Training and mobilizing local capacity

With so much missing, inaccurate, or downright dangerous in the state and regional response plans, we work with our allies to advocate changing attitudes, behaviors, and laws to update these plans with current science and evidence-based standards.

If necessary, we litigate

When the government fails to update and enforce laws, we litigate to force the policy changes needed to protect human and environmental health. In August 2024, we petitioned EPA to ban use of discontinued Corexit dispersants (still available) before the 2025 deadline.