Comparative Environmental Health Assessments

Abstract

Conceptual and methodological issues in calculating and comparing the health impacts from environmental risk factors in ways that are not only compatible across environmental hazards but also can be fairly compared to burdens from nonenvironmental risk factors, such as poor nutrition, unsafe sex, and smoking, are discussed. It is emphasized that a focus on environmental health burden does not always produce priorities that correspond to those related to environmental quality alone. The methods when applied to China's environmental and other risks using the Chinese burden of disease in terms of lost healthy life years as the metric are illustrated. Household environmental risks are still quite important in China, because of rural poverty, but have been exceeded by community environmental risks nationally. Global risks from climate are small at present, but have the potential to rise. Although not a major greenhouse gas emitter on a per capita basis compared to rich countries, China has already passed the threshold of imposing more global risk than it receives. The study ends with the suggestion that environmental risk assessment should use as a baseline estimates that are based on methods developed in international collaborative assessments, such as those in the WHO Comparative Risk Assessment, in order to foster comparability and policy and public confidence in the methods.