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The latest issue of its journal Adsp (News and dossier in public health) the High Council for Public Health devotes a report file after 15 years of public policies concerning the environmental impact on health. With one observation: we must go faster in reducing problematic exposures.
If the links between health and the environment seem obvious to you today, it will have taken time for the problem to be approached in this way in a scientific approach and for the environment in which we evolve and which we are constantly modifying to be linked to certain pathologies. Some causal links have now been established, but much remains to be done.
At the request of the Ministries of Health and Ecological Transition, the High Council for Public Health has devoted a complete file to 15 years of public policies, their failures but also their impact and the solutions that are emerging today.
A theme taken seriously only 15 years ago
It may seem unbelievable, but as the file indicates, it was only in 1994, at the Helsinki conference, that the World Health Organization defined the “environmental health“including both” the physical, chemical, biological, social, psychosocial and aesthetic factors of our environment “and the” practices for the management, resorption, control and prevention of environmental factors likely to affect the health of current and future generations”.
It took ten years for France to implement the first environmental health plan (2004-2009), renewed every five years and broken down into regional environmental health plans. But what roles did these plans play? And did they perform?
The urgency of accelerating the reduction of environmental exposures
Thus in this last file, the HCSP offers an overview of the evolution of environmental risks to health, proven or suspected, and above all arrives at lucid recommendations for a healthier future.
Act fast to improve air quality
Despite efforts and a drop in the concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and fine particles, atmospheric pollution remains a major public health problem, with, in addition, the case of ozone whose concentrations remain stable. “It is therefore important to accelerate measures to reduce the levels of atmospheric pollution, not only the peaks but above all the background pollution”. The measures concerning Indoor air pollutants also need to be enhanced.
Reinforce consideration of emerging risks
The introduction of emerging health risks (electromagnetic waves, nanotechnologies and endocrine disruptors) is well taken into account in the latest reports, but action to avoid cocktails of endocrine disruptors in particular must be reinforced.
“This photograph of the contamination of the population must result in stricter regulations, even going so far as the prohibition of certain molecules to reduce the exposure of the population, in particular in the case of pregnant women and children.“.
Adopt a national strategy
The HCSP formulated 16 general recommendations which emphasize the need to develop knowledge on the health effects and the evolution of the population’s perception of risks linked to the environment. These include in particular the need for an inter-ministerial National Environmental Health Strategy by granting legal value and dedicated funding to the plans and by strengthening cooperation between agencies. Finally, they insist on the urgency of implementing training for professionals and raising public awareness of environmental health issues with, among other things, the creation of a National Environmental Health Day.