Privacy policy
Drafted 23 July 2018, Last updated on 12 March 2025
The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) is a non-governmental organisation established in Belgium and addressing how the environment affects health in the European Union (EU) and beyond. We demonstrate how policy changes can help protect health and enhance people’s quality of life. We bring independent expertise and evidence from the health community to different decision-making processes. HEAL pursues the public interest objective of protecting and improving people’s health, including future generations, and is independent of any political party or commercial interest. The alliance receives funding from the European Union, governments and private foundations as well as through membership contributions. We do not accept funding from sources with commercial interests.
In order to achieve the best engagement with our supportive audience, such as yourself, HEAL sometimes needs to collect personal information about you. At HEAL we take protecting your personal information when using our websites seriously and we are committed to ensuring your information is safe and compliant with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This Privacy and Cookies Policy relates to our use of any personal information we may collect from you while you are using any pages of our websites https://env-health.org/, http://healpolska.pl/, http://www.edc-free-europe.org/, https://www.env-health.org/banpfas/ or when you subscribe to receiving news from HEAL.
Content of this Privacy and Cookies Policy
This Privacy and Cookies Policy explains the following:
- what information HEAL may collect about you
- how HEAL will use information we collect about you; when HEAL may use your details to contact you
- whether HEAL will disclose your details to anyone else
- your choices and rights regarding personal information you provide to us
- the use of cookies on HEAL’s websites and how you can accept cookies
Changes to this Privacy and Cookies Policy
We may update this Privacy and Cookies Policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law and/or our privacy practices, without notification in case of minor changes. We will always update the date of the latest revision of our Privacy and Cookies Policy on the top of this webpage. We encourage you to check whether we have recently made any changes to our Privacy and Cookies Policy. Any changes to our Privacy and Cookies Policy will become effective immediately, when we post the revised Privacy and Cookies Policy on our website.
Your Consent to this Privacy and Cookies Policy
By using our website(s) you are indicating that you consent to our use of your personal information as described in this Privacy and Cookies Policy (as regularly updated).
Data Collection and Use of Collected Data
What information may HEAL collect about you and how does HEAL collect information about you?
When you participate in, or access any of HEAL’s activities and services, such as visiting our website, subscribe to our website news or listserves, newsletters, participate in our petition campaigns, we may collect personal information about you. This information can consist of data points as submitted by you with our online services (e.g. on our websites), such as your name, email address, organisation. It can also be data displayed on a business card you have handed over to us. HEAL does not collect sensitive data such as health data of individuals.
How will HEAL use the information it collects about you?
HEAL will use the information it collects about you to provide updates to you about the activities of our organisation by way of information emails such as updates, newsletters, email groups on specific topics, member communications, article requests, event invitations, to answer your requests and to inform you about campaigns our organisation is running, thereby giving you the chance to join them.
HEAL may contact you:
- in relation to any service or activity you have signed up for; e.g. HEAL will send you its newsletter per your request.
- in relation to any correspondence we receive from you;
- for information purposes, where we believe you have consented for us to do so. If you receive anything from HEAL you have not requested, please do let us know. In every collective informational email we send to you there is a link with instructions how to unsubscribe.
Generally, HEAL will only use your personal information within HEAL. Sometimes HEAL uses third party services to process your personal information (such as your email address and subscription preferences) and to deliver the service you have requested from HEAL on HEAL’s behalf; for example for the delivery of newsletters, which you have requested to receive. HEAL requires these third parties to comply strictly with HEAL’s instructions and HEAL requires that these third parties do not use your personal information for their own business purposes. Please note that HEAL may need to transfer your personal information to countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) to allow these third parties to perform services on HEAL’s behalf. Where we engage these third parties, which process and store personal data outside of the EEA, we always endeavour to ensure that the processing of your personal information is in compliance with the applicable laws.
Data Security
HEAL never shares your personal information with third parties expect for those performing services on HEAL’s behalf (as outlined in B.2 of this statement) , will never send you advertisement or marketing emails and uses reasonable administrative, technical, personnel and physical measures to safeguard personal information in its possession against loss, theft and unauthorised use or modification. While we strive to protect your personal information, you will understand that we cannot guarantee the security of any information while being transmitted to us over the internet.
Therefore, please do not submit sensitive personal information to us online unless you accept the security risks of doing so.
Data Retention
HEAL is storing your personal information for as long as HEAL deems it necessary to provide services to you per your request. You have the right to access the personal data we store about you. You can contact us at any moment at dpo@env-health.org to update your data, review it, or request for your data to be deleted and to be forgotten altogether.
Your Choices and Rights regarding Your Personal Information Collected by HEAL
If you would like to access, review, correct, update or have your personal information deleted from our records, please contact HEAL at dpo@env-health.org. Once your identity is confirmed, HEAL will deal with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. You can always use the unsubscribe link in any of our mailings you receive.
Cookies Policy
What are Cookies?
Cookies are pieces of information that a website places on your device when you visit a website. Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit (session cookie) or for repeat visits (persistent cookie). Cookies may also be set by the website you are visiting (first party cookies) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (third party cookies).
The cookies are essential to the effective operation of our website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. More information about cookies can be found on websites like: allaboutcookies.org
HEAL’s Use of Cookies
HEAL uses cookies to track your preferences regarding our website’s features, including the ‘remember me’ login feature. Cookies enable HEAL to identify your device, or you, when you have logged in. HEAL uses cookies:
- that are strictly necessary to enable you to move around our websites or to provide certain basic features;
- to enhance the functionality of the website by storing your preferences;
- to help improve the performance of our website on your
Which cookies do we use? The following cookies may be used on this website:
WordPress Cookies
If you choose to login, WordPress (the software used to power this website) sets the following cookies:
wordpress_logged_in_[hash]
Session cookie.
WordPress cookie for a logged in user. It indicates when you’re logged in, and who you are, for
most interface use.
wp-settings-time- and wp-settings-
Duration: 1 Year
WordPress also sets a few wp-settings-{time}-[UID] cookies. The number on the end is your individual user ID from the users database table. This is used to customize your view of admin interface and possible also the main site interface.
PHPSESSID
Duration: Session
To identify your unique session on the website.
WordPress Comments
comment_author_[x], comment_author_email_[x] & comment_author_url_[x]
WordPress (the software used to power this website) will use these cookies if you leave a comment on any of our online posts. This is for your convenience, so you won’t need to re-type your name and email address again when you want to leave another comment. The cookies expire after just under 1 year.
Google Analytics
The following cookies are placed by Google Analytics to collect statistical data on how visitors are using our website. They track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.
_ga
Expires after 2 years Used to distinguish users.
_gid
Expires after 24 hours Used to distinguish users.
_gat
Expires after 1 minute
Used to throttle request rate.
Third Party Cookies
You may find links to third party websites on our website. These third party websites have separate privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. However, we welcome any feedback on the suitability and accuracy about these sites.
Most notably we use Google Analytics, a web analytics service which uses ‘cookies’. Each of these services sets its own cookies. Google uses this information for tracking how you use the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.
We embed videos from our official YouTube and Vimeo channel using a privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally – identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode.
We have also included a number of features, which allow our users to share some of our content via Facebook and Twitter. This does not set a cookie by itself, but if one is present it will read it. Another service we use is provided through MailChimp, which helps us to design email newsletters, share them on social networks and integrate with our other services.
HEAL doesn’t have direct access to those cookies and the use of those third-party cookies is governed solely by the respective service provider’s Privacy statement.
Cookie Acceptance and Effect of Clicking Agree on our Cookie Banner
By using our websites you consent to our use of cookies policy as updated from time to time and the cookies we use will be stored on your device, unless this functionality is rejected or disabled by your browser.
The first time you visit our website our Cookie Banner will appear, notifying you of the fact that HEAL uses cookies. If you click on the “ACCEPT” button in this Cookie Banner, HEAL will use a cookie to record this fact so that the Cookie Banner will not show up on your screen next time you visit our website from your device (using the same browser).
Turning Off Cookies and Ramifications Thereof
You can manage the cookies stored on your device as well as stop cookies from being installed on your browser. For more information on how to manage cookies usage on your device, please let us refer you to information found on these topics on allaboutcookies.org, more specifically by clicking on the links below:
- Managing the Cookies Stored on Your Device;
- Stop Cookies from Being Installed on your Browser.
Please note that if you prefer to block some or all of the cookies HEAL uses, you might lose some of our website’s functionality.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy and Cookies Policy, please contact Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL)’s Data Protection Officer, Stefan Grand-Meyer at dpo@env-health.org.
