Environmental Legislation and Public Health
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2010) | Viewed by 32759
Special Issue Editor
Interests: the use of science in environmental and health policy; the role of special interests in producing or influencing research used for regulation; the expression of limitations and uncertainty in policy-relevant research; disclosures of conflicts of interest and data-sharing in applied research
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Scientists continue to discover disturbing connections between environmental toxicants and public health impacts. Legislation, however, often lags far behind these scientific discoveries and too often takes an incomplete approach to the problems.
In this Special Issue, contributors are encouraged to identify environmental health problems insufficiently addressed by current international, national, and/or local legislation. Environmental health risks include air and water pollution, pesticides, indoor air hazards, land contamination, consumer products including food, and drinking water contamination.
Contributors are also encouraged to discuss some of the more significant impediments to developing effective environmental legislation for these and related risks. Some of the impediments could include:
- the difficulties in focusing public attention and legislators on uncertain risks that affect the diffuse public
- the absence of advocates for legislation that addresses environmental threats that primarily impact the poor
- corrupt or unaccountable legislators
- the role of special interests (i.e., lead, asbestos, tobacco) in undermining the rigor and reliability of the science used for policy
- difficulties associated with adequately accounting for uncertainty and dynamism in science in developing legal requirements
- insufficient support of public health research (i.e., on nanotechnology)
Finally, contributors are encouraged to offer suggestions for how some of these challenges to public health legislation might be overcome in the future.
Prof. Dr. Wendy E. Wagner
Guest Editor
Keywords
- regulation
- science
- adaptive management
- conflicts of interest
- environmental justice
- uncertainty
- environmental risks
- public health