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Sandy Buchanan Sandy Buchanan is Executive Director of Ohio Citizen Action, the state’s largest consumer and environmental organization. In the 1980s, Ms. Buchanan worked with communities to pass some of the first local right-to-know laws in the country. Those laws, adopted in Cincinnati, Akron, Cleveland and other cities, required industries to notify workers, fire fighters and community residents of the presence of hazardous chemicals. At the national level, Ms. Buchanan served as regional coordinator for the National Toxics Campaign’s drive to pass the federal Superfund law. That legislation contained a national Community Right-to-Know Act, modeled, in part, on Ohio’s local right-to-know laws. The Superfund bill also created the Toxics Release Inventory, which required industries to publicly report pollution releases. Ms. Buchanan has served on Ohio’s State Emergency Response Commission which oversees implementation of the right-to-know laws and she has testified in the U.S. Senate on implementation of the federal right-to-know law in Ohio. She has also been a leader in campaigns to oppose secrecy laws in Ohio. In 1992, she ran the campaign for a Toxics Right-to-Know Initiative in Ohio, which would have required manufacturers to label products containing chemicals that can cause cancer and birth defects, and would have required factories to notify neighbors of dangerous emissions. After a multi-million dollar advertising blitz by the chemical and allied industries, the voters defeated the initiative. |
Contact: Sandy
Buchanan
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