Pure Earth

Pure Earth

Formation	1999
Type	International NGO
Location	New York City, New York
President	Richard Fuller
Website	www.pureearth.org

Pure Earth is a New York City-based international not-for-profit organization founded in 1999 that works to identify, clean up, and solve pollution problems in low- and middle-income countries, where high concentrations of toxic pollution have devastating health impacts, especially on children. These communities suffer disproportionately from pollution-related diseases. Pure Earth remains the only significant organization of its kind working to solve pollution on a global scale.

Pure Earth's work focuses on two key pollutants: lead and mercury.

The Global Lead Program works on reducing lead poisoning from three key sources poisoning millions of children in low- and middle-income countries: the unsafe and informal recycling of used lead-acid (car) batteries; lead-glazed pottery, and contaminated spices.  

The Global Mercury Program works to reduce mercury from artisanal and small scale gold mining communities around the world by training miners to go mercury free, and helping miners in the Amazon rainforest restore land damaged by mining.

Pure Earth is known for the Toxic Sites Identification Program, a global movement to find and clean up the world’s most toxic sites. The program has trained over 500 pollution investigators and 90 government representatives worldwide, who have identified and mapped over 5000 toxic hotspots in communities around the world. The data they collect has built an “unprecedented public database of toxic sites” that helps local communities and governments plan clean up to protect residents.^[1]

Pure Earth is also known for initiating the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, which in turn led to the formation of The Lancet Commission on pollution and health and the publication of the groundbreaking report from the Lancet Commission on health and pollution which concludes that pollution is the largest environmental cause of death in the world today, killing three times more people than AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 15 times more deaths and war and other forms of violence.

In 2015, Pure Earth helped to successfully advocate for broadening the scope of toxic pollution addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).^[2]

In 2020, Pure Earth and UNICEF issued an urgent call to protect 800 million children poisoned by lead, following the publication of their joint report: The Toxic Truth: Children’s exposure to lead pollution undermines a generation of potential. The report revealed that lead poisoning is affecting children on a massive and previously unknown scale – one in three children globally have elevated blood lead levels, and nearly half of them live in South Asia.

Pure Earth has been recognized by Charity Navigator as one of the United States' top performing nonprofits.^[3]

Pure Earth was formerly known as the Blacksmith Institute, which was recognized for a series of World's Worst Pollution Problems reports that first brought attention to the global pollution problem.[1]