Health of People and Communities - Environmental Factors

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Health of People and Communities

The Effect of Environmental Factors on the Health of New Zealanders

Date of publication: December 2002

Summary
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Summary
This report is the first in a series of two reports from the Public Health Advisory Committee (PHAC) to the Minister of Health that consider wider influences on the health of the public.

This work on the environmental determinants of health dovetails with other PHAC work planned for 2002-03 on the relationship between utility services such as water and power supplies, and health; and on the impact on health of policies in other sectors such as transport and local government.

In this report, the Committee does not try to comprehensively address the whole range of environmental influences on health, such as workplace environment or hazardous waste management. Instead it focuses on a few significant environmental health issues and makes recommendations on them. For example, indoor and ambient air quality, water quality.

The PHAC found a number of obstacles to effectively addressing environmental impacts on health, which included a mismatch between the information needed to monitor environmental effects on health and the information available to do so; and the blurred accountabilities for monitoring environmental effects on health because the responsibility for doing so is spread across a number of agencies.

The PHAC calls for an integrated, intersectoral approach to policy-making and monitoring that addresses adverse impacts of the environment on health, and holds accountable those responsible for any identified problems.

The PHAC has several further recommendations to make in the specific areas of domestic indoor air quality, ambient air pollution, drinking water quality, surface and ground water quality and in the emerging areas of climate change and urban quality of life.

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This publication is available in PDF format below:

Health of People and Communities (PDF, 293 KB)

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Publishing information
Date of publication: December 2002

ISBN: 0-478-25551-9 (Book)
ISBN: 0-478-25550-0 (Internet)

HP: 3574