National Council for Science and the Environment
HUMAN HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

According to the Pew Environmental Health Commission, 90% of voters believe that the environment plays a significant role in health. Infectious diseases and other environmentally caused diseases, in particular, are continually creating new health burdens.Yet, environmental science and environmental health science communities are too frequently independent of one another, funded by different agencies and consisting of different researchers. If these disciplines fail to push ahead collectively with further research and prevention, the many burdens of environmentally influenced illness imposed upon our society may become even heavier.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Overarching Objectives

1. Increase the Science Base
The Administration and Congress should provide funding in order to:

  • increase the science base in environmental health
  • better inform policy
  • protect the health of humans and the environment. This is a time of great scientific opportunity, in view of new genomic and analytic approaches. Investing in funding in the next four years will have a major and positive impact on health and the environment.

    2. Multidisciplinary Research Programs
    The Administration should integrate efforts in environmental science and environmental health science via:

  • development of multidisciplinary research programs that can be supported by multiple agencies and multiple stakeholders (federal, state, non-governmental, industry, etc.)
  • supporting research program infrastructure and training for the next generation of investigators
  • establishing cross-disciplinary centers of excellence in many institutions.

    3. Coordinated Environmental Health Science Policy and Information Programs
    The Administration should coordinate environmental health science policy and information programs at the highest levels in the Public Health Service (PHS), EPA, DOE, DOD, etc. These departments and agencies should provide information about environmental health exposures and hazards (including information generated by the private sector).

    Specific Needs

    4. Public Need for Information
    Congress should fund additional research on how to identify and satisfy the public’s needs for information about environmental health.

    5. National Environmental Health Tracking System
    The Administration should create a national environmental health tracking system to monitor rates of chronic disease and exposures in the U.S. population in order to inform public health and policy and to benchmark progress.

    6. Monitoring of Human Exposures
    Congress should fund developmental research and monitoring of human exposures including:

    7. Health Benefits of the Natural Environment
    A partnership between health agencies and environmental agencies should study the health benefits of the natural environment. Both physical and psychological health benefits should be addressed.

    8. Health Implications of Global Changes and Ecological Trends
    The Administration should create programs to study the health implications of global changes and ecological trends including:

    • climate change, to understand trends and adaptive/mitigation strategies
    • links between environment and emerging/reemerging diseases (i.e., West Nile virus, red tide)
    • links between loss of ecosystem integrity and biodiversity and health impact, including cultural impacts
    • links between energy policies and use (e.g. utilities and transportation) and health.

    9. Environmental Impacts on Children
    The Administration should continue and expand efforts to understand and learn how to mitigate environmental impacts on children including:

    • conducting national longitudinal cohort studies
    • establishing centers of excellence in children’s environmental health
    • coordinating efforts on asthma, developmental disabilities and childhood cancer.

    10. Environmental Health Disparities
    The Administration should develop research initiatives that are aimed at understanding the role of environmental health disparities between different racial/ethnic and economic groups in the U.S. and internationally. Such initiatives would focus on:

    • the impacts in specific groups (e.g. metals and persistent pollutant exposures to Alaskan natives)
    • the development of interventions to prevent those impacts.

    11. Environmental Genomics/Proteinomics
    The Administration should initiate a federal effort to establish and coordinate centers for environmental genomics and proteinomics that would:

    • include social and ethical issues as well as genetics, statistics and information technology
    • make all information available online to researchers.

    12. Health Impacts of the Built Environment
    The Administration should establish a research program on the health impacts of the built environment, with broad participation by health, housing, transportation, and environmental research agencies and non-federal partners that would address such issues as urban ecology, urban sprawl (land use and transportation planning), and buildings (homes and institutions, including green buildings).


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