Casey Bartrem, executive director of TerraGraphics International Foundation, discussed the organization's work in low and middle-income countries to reduce health impacts associated with mineral production at the League of Women Voters of Moscow (LWV-Moscow) forum at Moscow’s 1912 Community Center.

The U.S. and other high-income nations have successfully implemented numerous environmental and public health regulations to protect communities and workers from environmental pollution. But global demand for commodities is higher than ever before. Mining, smelting and recycling industries have largely abandoned the U.S. and other high-income countries for locations with inadequate or poorly-enforced regulations. There is an urgent need to assist governments, workers, and communities in finding culturally appropriate, sustainable, and economically viable ways to improve living and working conditions in these locations.

TerraGraphics International Foundation, a Moscow-based nonprofit, aims to follow industry’s "path of least resistance" and build local and national capacity to solve environmental health challenges using environmental health intervention protocols developed at U.S. hazardous wastes sites.  

Bartrem has degrees from Michigan State University and the University of Idaho. She has worked on environmental health interventions in mining and recycling communities in the U.S., Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Kyrgyzstan. From 2007-2009, Casey was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Lesotho.