Assessing the health impacts of transnational corporations

Mandating environment controls, endorsing human rights treaties, ensuring all taxes are paid and restricting government lobbying are just some of the recommendations from a Corporate Health Impact Assessment (CHIA) undertaken by a team of public health experts of the transnational corporation (TNC) Rio Tinto.

This assessment revealed some of the serious and long-term health impacts that a TNC can have on nations and communities through mechanism such as increased pollution and habitat destruction, tax avoidance and human rights abuses. Because TNCs have the ability to operate partly outside of national boundaries, they can often avoid the regulatory structures imposed by individual jurisdictions...