Industrially Contaminated Sites and Health
1European Centre for Environment and Health, World Health Organization Bonn, Germany
2Italian National Health Institute, Rome, Italy
3Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain
Industrially Contaminated Sites and Health
Description
There are many instances of local sites that are highly contaminated by a variety of hazardous agents. Contamination in these sites can be due to the presence of industrial sources – with routine or accidental emissions, to the presence and accumulation of toxic waste, or to natural sources. In sites with past or current industrial contamination, often multiple agents are simultaneously found, posing a mix of certain or suspected risks. In many cases, such environmental pressures are borne by residential populations also subjects to higher than average risk factors of different nature, typically through socioeconomic and lifestyle related selection mechanisms. The combination of multiple exposures through air, water, soil, food, occupational and paraoccupational pathways, and high vulnerability may thus produce environmental and health “hotspots”.
Despite the ubiquity of such sites, the considerable extent of their potential health impact, and the availability of sound methodology for studying their health implications, a picture of the health impacts remains patchy, and limited to localised studies, of uneven quality and difficult to compare.
The literature on the subject is somewhat sparse, and the policy implications of the available studies are not evaluated consistently across different countries or realities. This seems to be in contrast with the need to inform complex and costly clean up and remediation activities worldwide with health-relevant data, and to inform industrial policy orientations with relevant and documented health considerations.
In order to address such knowledge gap, contributions are invited, including original research as well as review articles. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Descriptive and analytical epidemiological studies conducted in contaminated sites
- Methodology, strategies, and data needs for addressing the impact on human health of contaminated sites
- Health impact assessment in contaminated sites
- Disentangling occupational and nonoccupational risk factors
- The role of social health determinants; environmental justice
- Biomonitoring studies
- Implications of health findings for policy and remediation schemes
The special issue aims to be a useful resource to all researchers and agencies with an interest or mandate to deal with human health in contaminated sites. Contributions are therefore welcome from different settings, with variable degrees of data availability, quality ,and resolution.
Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/jeph/icsh/ according to the following timetable: