Population health and waste management: scientific data and policy options
WHO
Waste management is becoming an increasingly complex matter in many European countries.Effects on health and well-being of human exposure both to waste materials and to the products of waste management are, in several instances in Europe, a cause of concern. The Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization organized an expert workshop to review the available evidence on health effects and exposures involved in waste landfilling and incineration, analyse key European case studies and discuss how to support European authorities at various level on waste policy-making, by taking into account the health considerations. This report illustrates the findings of the workshop.
With regards to waste landfills, a wide variety of exposures, exposure pathways and exposure scenarios are involved, entailing a large complexity and difficulty in estimating the health risks possibly involved. Only few epidemiological studies have evaluated sites with respect to the types of chemicals they contain and release; most studies on the health effects of waste landfills in fact lack direct exposure measurement, and rely on residential distance from the site or sometimes on exposure modelling. Many health endpoints have been considered in epidemiological studies, including cancer incidence and mortality and reproductive outcomes such as birth defects and low birth weight. Despite the methodological limitations, the scientific literature on the health effects of landfills provides some indication of the association between residing near a landfill site and adverse health effects. The evidence, somewhat stronger for reproductive outcomes than for cancer, is not sufficient to establish the causality of the association. However, in consideration of the large proportion of population potentially exposed to landfills in many European countries and of the low power of the studies to find a real risk, the potential health implications cannot be dismissed……
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