Environmental health effects vary considerably with regard to their severity, type of disease, and duration. Integrated measures of population health, such as environmental burden of disease (EBD), are useful for setting priorities in environmental health policies and research. This review is a summary of the full Environmental Burden of Disease in European countries (EBoDE) project report.

In a changing climate, increasing temperatures are anticipated to have profound health impacts. These impacts could be mitigated if individuals and communities adapt to changing exposures; however, little is known about the extent to which the population may be adapting. The objective of the study was to investigate the hypothesis that if adaptation is occurring, then heat-related mortality would be decreasing over time.

Genetics may partially explain observed heterogeneity in associations between traffic-related air pollution and incident asthma. The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of gene variants associated with oxidative stress and inflammation on associations between air pollution and incident childhood asthma.

Original Source

Long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution may increase blood pressure (BP) and induce hypertension. However, evidence supporting these associations is limited, and they may be confounded by exposure to traffic noise and biased due to inappropriate control for use of BP-lowering medications. The researchers evaluated the associations of long-term traffic-related air pollution with BP and prevalent hypertension, adjusting for transportation noise and assessing different methodologies to control for BP-lowering medications.

Shifting to active modes of transport in the trip to work can achieve substantial co-benefits for health, social equity, and climate change mitigation. Previous integrated modeling of transport scenarios has assumed active transport mode share and has been unable to incorporate acknowledged system feedbacks. The researchers compared the effects of policies to increase bicycle commuting in a car-dominated city and explored the role of participatory modeling to support transport planning in the face of complexity.

It is difficult to discern the proportion of blood lead (PbB) attributable to ambient air lead (PbA) given the multitude of lead (Pb) sources and pathways of exposure. The PbB-PbA relationship has previously been evaluated across populations. This relationship was a central consideration in the 2008 review of the Pb national ambient air quality standards. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the relationship between PbB and PbA concentrations among children nationwide for recent years and to compare the relationship with those obtained from other studies in the literature.

Water distribution systems are vulnerable to performance deficiencies that can cause (re)contamination of treated water and plausibly lead to increased risk of gastrointestinal illness (GII) in consumers. The researchers reviewed published studies that compare direct tap water consumption to consumption of tap water re-treated at the point of use (POU) and studies of specific system deficiencies such as breach of physical or hydraulic pipe integrity and lack of disinfectant
residual.

Very high levels of prenatal maternal mercury have adverse effects on the developing fetal brain. It has been suggested that all possible sources of mercury should be avoided. However, although seafood is a known source of mercury, little is known about other dietary components that contribute to the overall levels of blood mercury. The objective of the study was to quantify the contribution of components of maternal diet to prenatal blood mercury level.

In July 1956, in a fishing village near the city of Minamata on Japan’s Shiranui Sea, a baby girl named Shinobu Sakamoto was born. Her parents soon realized something was wrong. At 3 months old, when healthy babies can hold up their heads, Sakamoto could not. She grew slowly and began crawling unusually late. At age 3 years, she drooled excessively and still couldn’t walk. Her parents sent her to live at a local hospital, where she spent four years in therapy to learn to walk, use her hands, and perform other basic functions.

Environmental determinants of appendicitis are poorly understood. Past work suggests that air pollution may increase the risk of appendicitis. The researchers investigated whether ambient ground-level ozone (O3) concentrations were associated with appendicitis and whether these associations varied between perforated and nonperforated
appendicitis.