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ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH INDICATORS: STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT REPORT
Citation:
Calderon, R L., H Zenick, P Preuss, AND D M. Shaw. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH INDICATORS: STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT REPORT. Presented at 2004 Environmental Public Health Tracking Conference, Phildelphia, Pennsylvania, March 24-26, 2004.
Description:
Background/Purpose: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving in the direction of measuring and assessing human health and ecological outcomes. The new "outcome" measures complement the more traditional approaches by more closely reflecting the actual public health or ecological impacts that result from environmental quality/conditions. Objectives(s): A draft report was released in 2003 that describes what EPA, knows and doesn't know, dentifies measure/indicators to report on status of national environmental conditions, trends and their mpacts on human health and the nations's natural resources and discusses the challenges that the nation aces in improving these measures. By providing a quantitative assessment of these impacts, outcome ndicators can help to improve environmental decision-making and enhance our ability to evaluate, either prospectively or retrospectively, the success of those decisions. Methods: Key data sources used for the health chapter include the: World Health Organization (WHO), World Health Statistics Annual, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,, National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, National Cancer Institute, Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, The EPA's National Human Exposure Assessment Survey (NHEXAS), Results: Key indicators were either health outcome indicators (mortality or morbidity) or exposure indicators (biomonitoring). Examples of key indicators include cancer, cardiovascular and asthma mortality, blood lead, cotinine and selected pesticide levels and specific indicators for children such as birth defects, low birth weight and children blood lead levels Conclusions: Continued effective coordination and collaboration among such agencies will be vital to further the development and use of environmental public health indicators.