Environmental Health: From Global to Local

The editor of this book, Howard Frumkin, is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist, and epidemiologist. He is also the Director of the National Centre for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Professor Frumkin has with this book very ably drawn together 49 contributing chapter authors to span the main areas of global concern and also address the principal, relevant practical local issues. As Professor Frumkin notes in the introduction, the World Health Organization has defined environmental health as comprising ‘those aspects of human health, including quality of life, that are determined by physical, chemical, biological, social, and psychosocial factors in the environment. It also refers to the theory and practice of assessing, correcting, controlling, and preventing those factors in the environment that can potentially affect adversely the present and future generations’. The editor has therefore set himself a huge task. I think he has accomplished it admirably and with considerable skill. The book is divided into five sequential parts: Methods and Paradigms (ecology, toxicology, epidemiology, exposure assessment and management, psychology, genetics, ethics and justice); Environmental Health on the Global Scale (population pressure, climate change and developing nations); Environmental Health On The Regional Scale (air pollution, energy production, healthy communities and water and health); Environmental Health on the Local Scale (solid and hazardous waste, pest control and pesticides, food safety, healthy buildings, workplace health and safety, radiation, injuries, environmental disasters, contact with nature and children as a special population) and The Practice of Environmental Health (prevention, practice, geographical information systems, risk assessment, environmental health policy, risk communication and legal remedies). The chapters are clearly set out, easy to read, very informative and accompanied by excellent diagrams, tables and summary information. Interestingly, the editor with this second edition has introduced with all the chapters a declaration of conflicts of interest from each author. Like him, I have not seen previously this policy in a major textbook and think it helps to ensure the integrity of each chapter. I enjoyed reading this book and found much valuable material in it. It was particularly interesting to explore the interrelationships between environmental and occupational medicine and ways in which the ecological framework has been set out. Specifically, I recommend it to those occupational physicians who as well as being involved with workplace health are being asked, increasingly, to become involved with other public health practitioners in the broader issues of the health and well-being of the working age population. ★★★ (Buy and keep)