Institute for Environmental Health and its affiliated companies (“IEH”) is committed to safeguarding the privacy of its service users and the visitors to its websites.  In this Privacy Policy, “we”, “us” and “our” refers to IEH.  

This Privacy Policy explains how IEH collects, shares and/or uses any personal information about you and how you can exercise your privacy rights.  Please review this Privacy Policy carefully so you can be sure to understand any information relevant to you.  If you have any further questions, please contact us at the information provided below.

Privacy Policy Scope.

This Privacy Policy relates to the following:

1. Those who share their personal information or business contact information with IEH for the purpose of a possible or ongoing business relationship.  This includes information shared during trainings, tradeshows, conferences, or for any other business purpose.  
2. Those who use IEH’s website, educational platforms or other on-line services under IEH’s control.
3. Those who interact with IEH as a vendor, visitor to our locations or offices and regulatory agencies.

Applicants and employees of IEH are governed under a separate privacy notice detailed here.

IEH also uses Google applications with its website.  Google’s privacy policy can be found here.

Types of Information IEH Collects.

We collect information you provide voluntarily, data obtained from your use of our websites, and information we receive from other sources.  This typically includes:

1. Personal information provided directly from you in your interaction with IEH.  This information is used for the purpose described or detailed at the time of collection.
2. Contact information you provide in attempting to connect with IEH on our websites.
3. When you join one of IEH’s platforms or register an account with IEH.
4. Financial information such as a credit card or bank account, and information related to said accounts for security purposes, may be collected for use of payment. 
5. When you participate as a speaker on behalf of IEH, or in furtherance of IEH’s business in any way, we may ask you to provide certain contact details and information.
6. When you visit our locations, we may collect information relating to you including your name, contact details, role within your organization, geographic location, and reason for visiting IEH’s location.
7. If you take a survey or comment on your experience with our services or products we may request certain information from you including your name, contact information, position in your company.
8. If you are acting, or attempting to act, as a consultant or as a contractor for IEH, we may request your name, contact details, background information, role within your organization and reason for interacting with IEH.
9. If you fill out any form at a marketing event or trade show, the information requested on that form which may include name, contact details, organization you are affiliated with and reason for interest in IEH and/or its products or services.
10. We may obtain information related to you as collected by Google and its analytics.
11. When you receive an email from IEH, it may be used to collect information including the time the email is opened and the sort of content accessed through the email.
12. Information from third parties used to maintain or create our relationship with you.  This may include collecting information from companies we acquire and or that we target for acquisition, as allowed under relevant regulations and/or laws.
13. We may acquire information from publicly available sources (e.g. websites, network listings, publications, social media) or from third parties who act on your behalf, as allowed under relevant regulations and/or laws.

Reasons for Collection of Information.

Your granting of any consent and your provision of any personal information to IEH is entirely voluntary.   If you choose not to consent or to provide your personal information, that will not be held against you for any reason. That said, there are circumstances in which we cannot take action without certain personal information.  Personal information is often necessary and required to process your orders or requests, manage contractual relationships, or to provide you with specific content. In such cases, it will unfortunately not be possible for us to provide you with what you request without the relevant personal information.

Generally, personal information IEH collects will be for the purposes described at the time of collection or as described herein.  However, IEH may use your personal information similar to and aligned with the purposes specifically disclosed to you.  This may include purposes of scientific research, statistical analysis, or other compilations, as allowed and permitted under applicable regulations and/or laws.

Use of Collected Information.

IEH determines what personal information to collect, how that personal information will be used, and how long that personal information will be stored.  Whether IEH ever shares such personal information depends on your relationship with us.  For instance, if you submit a question or comment on one of our websites, you should expect that information to be shared with individuals that may be needed to address the question or concern.  Any use of your personal information will only be as allowed under applicable regulations and/or laws.

If you work for one of IEH’s customers, vendors, or suppliers, the entity controlling the personal information will be the IEH company you are conducting business with.  This information can generally be found on any invoice from the company or within any agreement executed with that company.  For any other individuals interacting in some other way with IEH, the entity controlling the personal information would be the entity that manages your relationship with IEH.  

The list of IEH affiliated companies can be found here.

Specific ways in which IEH may use your personal information include:

1. To create an account, including a potential on-line account where applicable.  This account is to help maintain assistance with providing our business or services.
2. To enable you to interact with our on-line services, including webinars or similar educational content.
3. Verify your identity, including when it may be required by law.
4. Maintain your account, including updating orders and transactions.
5. In negotiating and/or entering agreements with you, including vendor agreements, services agreements, etc.
6. To assist in fulfilling orders for services and products and to perform any other obligations in relation to our business relationship with you, including as may be required by law.
7. To contact you about products and/or services which may be of interest to you or to otherwise update you on products and/or services we offer.
8. To comply with regulations and/or laws that apply to IEH.
9. To verify financial transactions.
10. We may use personal information we collect from you, or otherwise from publicly available sources to enhance your customer profile so we may better align you with our sales and/or marketing efforts.

Sharing of Personal Information.

Specific reasons IEH may disclose your personal information to third parties include:

1. IEH entities for the purposes and under the conditions outlined above. 
2. Service providers processing personal information for business purposes on IEH’s behalf, for example to process credit cards and payments, shipping and deliveries, host, manage and service our data, distribute emails, research and analysis, advertising, analytics, manage brand and product promotions as well as administering certain services and features. 
3. Other third parties to the extent necessary to: (i) comply with a government request, a court order or applicable law; (ii) prevent illegal uses of our Platform or violations of our Platform’s Terms of Use and our policies; (iii) defend ourselves against third party claims; and (iv) assist in fraud prevention or investigation. 
4. To governmental entities, including law enforcement bodies, regulatory authorities, government agencies or other third parties where we deem disclosure of your personal information as being necessary as a matter of regulation and/or law, to defend our legal rights and to protect vital interests of other individuals.
5. To a buyer in connection with any acquisition of our business, or part thereof, so long as said buyer only uses such information for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
6. To any other individual with your consent and disclosure.

Sale of Personal Information.

We do not sell your personal information.

Security of Personal Information.

IEH uses appropriate organizational measures to protect personal information it collects and uses.  The measures are designed to provide security appropriate for the risk of using the personal information.  Your personal information is contained behind our secure networks and is only accessible by a limited number of individuals who have access rights to obtain such information.  Those individuals are required to treat your personal information as confidential.  We require a similar level of diligence on any third party that is allowed access to your personal information as required by applicable regulations and/or laws.

Retention of Data.

We retain the personal information we collect where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so.  This includes for providing you services and/or products as requested and to comply with our own requirements (legal, tax, accounting, etc.).

When we no longer have a legitimate need for your personal information, we will either delete it or anonymize it.  If for some reason neither is possible at the time, we will securely store your personal information and refrain from doing anything with it until deletion is possible. 

Personal Information Protection.

There are many circumstances that IEH cannot do business with you without using personal information.  However, you can choose to opt out of many ways of its use.

You can choose to opt out of the use of cookies when using our on-line resources.  This may leave the content less tailored for you.  

You can choose to opt out of receiving marketing emails and or other information at any time.  

You can submit a request to IEH with respect to your personal information and request that it not be used.  You can email IEH or write to IEH at the contact information provided below.  

IEH will take reasonable efforts to promptly comply with your requests and will do so in accordance with applicable regulations and/or laws.  When you do contact us, we may need to request information to confirm your identity to assist with your request.  Failure to provide such requested information may leave IEH uncapable to follow through on your request.

If it is the case that we receive your personal information through one of our customers and use it on their behalf while fulfilling our contractual or other obligations, we may be acting solely as a processor.  We would not have control over our customer’s privacy or security processes or their practices.  If your personal information has been submitted by one of our customers and you wish to exercise your rights, please contact the customer directly or provide us with the name of the customer so that we may contact them to refer your request to them.

Your Personal Information Rights.

Depending on where you live, you may be entitled to certain rights with respect to your personal information, as described below.

1. Right to Know – You may have the right to know what personal information the business has collected about you, including the categories of personal information, the categories of sources from which it is collected, the business or commercial purposes for collecting, selling, or sharing it, and the categories of third parties to whom we disclose it.
2. Access and Data Portability – Subject to certain exceptions, you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we collected about you during the 12 months before your request.
3. Deletion – You have the right to request that we delete information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions.  Where applicable we will notify any of our related entities and all third parties we have shared your information with to delete your personal information unless such notification proves impossible or involves disproportionate effort.
4. Correct Inaccurate Information – You may have the right to request that we correct inaccuracies in the personal information we maintain about you.
5. Targeted Advertising – We do not sell your information for monetary or valuable consideration. You may have the right to opt-out of having your personal information shared for purposes of our targeted advertising.  If you wish to opt out of such use, inform us by clicking on the “Do Not Sell or Share My Person Information” link below.
6. Sensitive Information – IEH only collects , uses, and discloses your sensitive personal information to provide services to you.
7. Opt-Out Preference Signals – Some web browsers allow consumers to automatically exercise their right to opt-out of sale/sharing with all businesses they interact with online by initiating an opt-out preference signal. We will honor such opt-out preference signals.
8. No Retaliation  – We will not discriminate against you in any manner for your choice to exercise any right stated herein or as otherwise authorized under regulation and/or law.  

Children’s Privacy

We do not intend for our websites or online services to be used by anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect or share information of consumers between the ages of 13 – 16. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we may have collected information about your child, please contact us immediately as described below.

International Personal Information Transfer.

IEH operates in numerous countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia and those within the European Union.  In circumstances where your personal information would need to be transferred across international lines, such transfers are made according to the applicable data protection laws, based on your consent when required.  IEH endeavors to implement appropriate safeguards for such transfers as required pursuant to the pertinent regulations and/or laws of the varying countries in which it operates.

Additional Disclosures for Personal Information in the EU and the UK.

This section provides general information about how IEH collects, stores, uses, transfers and otherwise processes personal data in or from certain countries in the European Union (“EU”) and the United Kingdom (“UK”), in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and its local implementations. This section does not supersede the applicability of any privacy policy found on the website of an EU or UK-based IEH affiliate with whom you have engaged, as that entity would be the controller with respect to your personal information and the entity to which your personal information subject rights requests should be directed.

Lawful Bases of Processing – Where an IEH entity is acting as a controller that determines the purposes and means of processing your personal information, such as when we collect, use, and share personal data as described in this Privacy Policy, we must have a lawful basis for processing for doing so. Our lawful bases for processing personal data include:

1. to conclude or perform a contract with you, for example to process your purchases of or requests for products and services or to communicate with you about orders, purchases, returns, services, accounts, programs; 
2. for our legitimate business purposes, including to respond to your customer service inquiries and requests for information, to maintain, improve, and analyze our websites, mobile applications, ads, and the products and services we offer, to detect, prevent, or investigate security breaches or fraud, and to facilitate the functionality of our websites and/or mobile applications;
3. to comply with our legal obligations, for example to maintain appropriate records for internal administrative purposes and as required by applicable law, and provide important product safety information and notice of product recalls; and
4. on the basis of your consent, for example to send you via email and other electronic means personalized promotions and special offers or informing you about our brands, products, events, or other promotional purposes.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by modifying your promotional preferences by contacting us as described below.

Rights under the GDPR – Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

1. Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
2. Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you.
3. Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it.
4. Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party), or where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
5. Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you.
6. Request the transfer of your personal information to another party, when possible.
7. Not be subject to automated decision-making producing legal or significant effects on an individual, which we do not engage in.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us and specify which GDPR privacy right(s) you wish to exercise. We must verify your identity in order to honor your request, which we will respond to within 30 days of receipt.

Retention – As described in the “Retention” section, as a general rule, we keep your data for only as long as it is needed to complete the purpose for which it was collected or as required by law. We may need to keep your data for longer than our specified retention periods to honor your requests, including to continue keeping you opted out of marketing emails, or to comply with legal, regulatory, accounting or other obligations.

Complaints – If you have any issues with our compliance, you have the right to lodge a complaint with an supervisory authority. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to first address your concerns and would welcome you directing an inquiry first to us per our contact information below.

Amendment to Privacy Policy.

IEH may choose to update this Privacy Policy from time to time by publishing an updated policy on our website.  You may review this page to ensure you are aware of changes to the website.  We may also notify you if we are making substantial changes to the policy that we believe needs to be communicated beyond just through updating the website.

Date Privacy Policy Last Updated.

April 18, 2023

IEH Contact Information.  

Principal Place of business:  

15300 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA  98155

Telephone:  

(206) 522-5432

Email:  

privacy@iehinc.com

Limiting or Opting Out of the Use of Personal Information.

If you wish to opt out of all of our use of sharing your personal information, please click this link Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information.

If you wish to otherwise limit our use of sharing your personal information, please click this link Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information.

If you would like an authorized agent to exercise your rights for you, they may use the same links described above to submit requests. We require documentation demonstrating your agent’s authority to submit requests on your behalf. For example, a valid power of attorney or other documentation, including a letter, signed by you authorizing the agent to submit your requests.  If an authorized agent make such requests, we will follow up to ensure the proper information is provided.

Metrics Disclosure.

California law requires that certain metrics be disclosed regarding various requests received from California residents.  Those metrics can be found here.