tailieunhanh - THE BURDEN OF DISEASE ATTRIBUTABLE TO ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

Ongoing monitoring and good data are the cornerstones of effective efforts to improve water quality. Addressing water quality challenges will mean building capacity and expertise in developing countries and deploying real-time, low-cost, rapid, and reliable field sampling tools, technologies, and data-sharing and management institutions. Resources are needed to build national and regional capacity to collect, manage, and analyze water quality data. Improve communication and education Among the most important tools for solving water quality problems are education and communication. Water plays key cultural, social, economic, and ecological roles. Demonstrating the importance of water quality to households, the media, policy makers, business. | THE BURDEN OF DISEASE ATTRIBUTABLE TO ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION Professor Ian Mathews and Dr Sharon Parry Department of Epidemiology Statistics Public Health University of Wales College of Medicine Cardiff University Heath Park Cardiff CF14 4XN The views presented in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent HPA views July 2005 The burden of disease attributable to environmental pollution Summary This paper presents a summary of the information available in the literature aimed at estimating the fraction of mortality and or morbidity that can be attributed to environmental factors. It is a first step in the process of quantifying the possible burden of disease from environmental pollution. Current estimates are based on very uncertain data and limited datasets and therefore need to be interpreted with extreme caution. The extent to which environmental pollutants contribute to common diseases is not accurately resolved. However global estimates conservatively attribute about 8-9 of the total burden of disease to pollution. Data is presented on the evidence available for diseases such as asthma allergies cancer neuro-developmental disorders congenital malformations effects of ambient air pollution on birth weight respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and mesothelioma. Health effects from environmental lead exposure and disruption of the endocrine function are also presented. 1. Background The need to estimate the burden of disease associated with pollutants is highlighted not only by the evidence base on associations but also by the scale of use of chemicals in our modern society. Fifteen thousand chemicals are produced in quantities in excess of 10 000 pounds annually and 2 800 are produced in annual quantities in excess of 1 million pounds. These high volume chemicals have the greatest potential to be dispersed in environmental media and less than half of these have been tested for human toxicity US EPA 1996 Goldman LR et al 2000 NAS 1984