Environmental Epidemiology Study methods and application

Air pollution, water contamination, persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, metals, and radiofrequencies are just some examples of environmental factors that have been linked to adverse health effects such as cancer, respiratory disease and reproductive problems. Environmental epidemiology studies the interaction of disease and these environmental determinants of disease at a population level. Whilst risks associated with environmental exposures are generally small, the exposed population, and hence the population burden of disease, may be large. To detect these small risks, it is therefore essential that related methods and their application are refined. In addition, there is increasing attention on environmental health issues from the public, government, and media, thus raising the profile of envrionmental epidemiology in preventive medicine. This book describes the methods of environmental epidemiology, with emphasis on good practice. It outlines epidemiology, with emphasis on good practice. It outlines the basic principles of epidemiology and environmental health, and describes in more detail special environmental epidemiological designs that are rarely described in other textbooks. The principles of health risk assessment and forecasting, as well as the application of study data in these types of study, are explored. Several chapters cover practical issues in the conduct of studies, such as field work and data analyses and its requirements. Ethical issues and the role of environmental epidemiology in policy making are also covered.

Dean Baker has more than 25 years of research experience in occupational and environmental epidemiology. The primary emphasis of his research has been on community-based epidemiological studies. During the past several years, he has focused on developmental toxicity and children's environmental health. He has conducted several epidemiological research studies examining chronic health effects of gestational and early childhood exposure to heavy metals and organochlorine chemicals. His other area of research has been on the health effects of psychosocial stressors in the workplace and in communities exposed to environmental hazards. In both of these areas, Dr. Baker has made contributions to the epidemiological study design and methods. He was elected 3 times as Secretary-Treasurer of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, and was a founding member. He is an active teacher at the university, directing an occupational medicine residency program and supervising graduate students. Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen has been involved in various environmental exposure assessment, epidemiology, and health risk assessment studies in the Netherlands, the UK, Eastern Europe and the US. His interests include the health effects of chlorination by-products in water, traffic related air pollution and metals, specifically in relation to reproductive, respiratory, renal and cancer effects. He has published over a hundred papers. He graduated from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and went to do a PhD at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London, UK. For his post doc he went to the University of California, Davis, USA after which he took up a faculty position at Imperial College London, UK. In January 2007 he joined the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona, Spain as a Research Professor. He is associate editor on the journals 'Occupational and Environmental Medicine' and the 'Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology'.