Human health is increasingly influenced by environmental health factors, such as climate change or pollutants; the inclusive consideration of these effects is also known as "one health". Indeed, the emissions of human technology affect the climate and can lead to adverse accumulation of toxic or persistent chemicals in the environment. The high rate of change induced in the environment can surpass the capacity for natural adaptations and put at risk the balance of the biosphere. Our health, our environment, and our economic system are at menace alike.

We would like to make technology more sustainable by empowering amendments to current material flows.
To reveal and address existing problems we perform reliable quantitative analytics in gas, liquid and solid media; furthermore, we develop models to study and control spreading, degradation as well as interactions with biological systems. Fundamentally new technologies are developed to remove and efficiently up-convert or safely degrade pollutant chemistry.

In this context it is often of high priority to develop novel materials and processes to replace existing problematic solutions. The development of PFAS alternatives is just a prominent example. Along these lines, we apply modern design principles like "safe and sustainable by design (SSbD)" and therein develop new tools that help us early in development to avoid societal and economical drawbacks: in terms of above example, it is important that PFAS alternatives do not create new problems.

Empa provides a unique interdisciplinary research space that combines leading expertise in analytics, chemical synthesis, materials structural control and processing from the nanometer to macroscopic scale as well as hazard & risk assessment, LC(I)A and modelling of heat- and material- flows. We have a decades long experience in transdisciplinary application of such research results into practice, with federal and cantonal offices as well as all relevant branches of Swiss industries.
Due to this strong interdisciplinary nature of the topic, ranging from human health to environmental health, the Empa RFA's "Health" and "Energy, Resources, Emission" are both linked by this health cluster.