environmental health indicators for new zealand: feasibility study

2. BACKGROUNDAgenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action adopted by more than 178 Governments at theUnited Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio deJaneiro, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992. It explicitly identifies the inter-relationships of humanhealth, the environment and development, and the need to improve health in order to achievesustainable development. Thereby providing an internationally agreed framework forembedding both environmental and health information in the broader context of sustainabledevelopment.To meet this goal, development policies and programmes need access to quality data andinformation on these differing areas, based on a clear understanding of the underpinninginter-relationships.In most countries, responsibilities for the collection, collation, and analysis of environmentand population health data are spread among different agencies, and the links between healtheffects and potential environmental impacts are rarely explicit. As a consequencepreventative/remediation actions are initiated with insufficient evidence.To help this, WHO-Europe have instigated a project to develop and test a pan-Europeansystem of environmental health indicators covering all the principal [physical] environmentalissues of human health relevance. Initiated in October 1999 and aimed originally at theestablishment of a comprehensive EH monitoring system within the NEHAP framework andit has resulted in a proposed common “core” set of environmental health indicators and aprotocol for their pilot testing in selected countries. Eleven environmental themes wereidentified :• Air quality,• Housing,• Traffic accidents,• Noise,• Waste and contaminated lands,• Radiation,• Water and sanitation,• Food safety,• Chemical emergencies, and• Workplace.and subsequently a set of 51 “core” indicators derived for international assessments.Most of the core indicators are also applicable for use at a subnational level. The core set isthat which all countries would have the available data whereas an extended set is alsoproposed for countries with more developed monitoring systems.Environmental Health Indicators 5 18 December 2003for New Zealand