The significance of the environment for health is increasingly being recognized. There is a need for systematic approaches to assessment of environmental factors most relevant to health, health outcomes most influenced by the environment, and the relationships between them, as well as for approaches to representing the results of such assessments in policy deliberations. As a step in the develo...

What role can public participation play in environmental management? Among major tools for environmental management, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been widely practised in many countries. Its effectiveness, however, varies depending on the extent to which transparency and public participation are incorporated in its process. In this article, we analyse the role of public participati...

Background Appalachia is a region of the United States that faces significant environmental and health disparities. Understanding these disparities and the social determinants that contribute to them are critical to reducing health inequities. The purpose of this research is two-fold. First, through secondary data analysis, we document environmental and health disparities as well as demographic...

In policymaking on environmental health, it is often assumed that the entire population is exposed to and reacts to environmental contaminants in a similar manner. However, this assumption is misguided, especially where children are concerned. This article presents the scientific basis for the impacts of the environment on children, showing how children are different from adults in the ways in ...

Eighteen years ago President William Clinton issued Executive Order 13045 calling for each federal agency to “ensure that its policies, programs, activities, and standards address disproportionate risks to children that result from environmental health risks or safety risks” (Clinton and Gore 1997). As part of this Executive Order, Clinton established the President’s Task Force on Environmental...

The consensus process was applied to addressing a public health topic; this was a novel endeavor. The following question was addressed: What role, if any, should sentinel health events play in the decision-making process for identifying the effects of environmental exposure? The panel developed three levels of sentinel health events lists: those that are clearly identifiable, those that are pot...

Sustainable resource management has become the most hotly debated and challenging concept in environmental research and development policy. Based largely on a notion defined by the Brundtland Commission a decade ago, calls for attention to sustainability have become de rigueur in the academic, conservation, and international development communities. Discussion of the issues involved have led to...

There are currently two commonly used approaches to assessing economic impacts of health damage resulting from environmental pollution: human capital approach (HCA) and willingness-to-pay (WTP). WTP can be further divided into averted expenditure approach (AEA), hedonic wage approach (HWA), contingent valuation approach (CVA) and hedonic price approach (HPA). A general review of the principles ...

We review patterns of plant species richness with respect to variables related to resource availability and variables that have direct physiological impact on plant growth or resource availability. This review suggests that there are a variety of patterns of species richness along environmental gradients reported in the literature. However, part of this diversity may be explained by the differe...