How can we measure the impact of the environment on human health?
Being able to measure the impact of the environment on human health is an important public policy challenge and one that requires a much greater investment than we have given it so far. We need to understand the risks and benefits associated with various courses of action so we can make policy decisions that favour human health. One way to do this is to identify variables/indicators or proxy variables/indicators that can help us understand how human health and systems are affected by our interactions with the environment. We’ve made progress in some areas. For example, with respect to the relationship between air quality and cardiorespiratory diseases, we’ve been able to measure trends using some rough indicators of illness and disease, including mortality and morbidity analyses (see article on page 9). But, we have a long way to go! We often focus on acute situations and fail to recognize the underlying chronic dimensions that must be taken into account. How can research inform policy
