ENVIE EU co-ordination action on indoor air quality and health effects

Transcription

1 Indoor Air 2008, August 2008, Copenhagen, Denmark - Paper ID: 685 ENVIE EU co-ordination action on indoor air quality and health effects Eduardo O. Fernandes 1,*, Matti Jantunen 2, Paolo Carrer 3 and Olli Seppänen 4 1 IDMEC Institute of Mechanical Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal 2 Environment and Health Department, National Public Health Institute, Kuopio, Finland 3 Department Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Milan, Italy 4 Helsinki University of Technology, Finland * Corresponding eof@fe.up.pt SUMMARY EnVIE is a co-ordination action on indoor air quality and related health effects supported by the Sixth Framework R&D Programme of the European Union. It involves as partners eighteen European institutions from eleven countries covering a wide spectrum of scientific specialties related to health and the built environment. EnVIE method departs from the identification of the evidence - based indoor air related health effects to search for the causal relationship with the indoor pollutant sources. It addresses, in particular, how indoor air quality may contribute to the observed rise in asthma and respiratory allergy, together with acute and chronic health impacts. The formal outcome of EnVIE, besides all fora and interactions with the scientific and policy making actors, will be expressed in the final proceedings of the EnVIE Conference planned for the second semester of 2008 and, finally, by the issue of a set of recommendations on policies for indoor environment and health. This paper provides information on EnVIE objectives and method as well as on the course of action. Other two closed related papers are presented at IA2008, covering the health (Carrer et al., 2008) and the risk (Jantunen et al., 2008) perspectives. KEYWORDS Indoor air quality, Health effects, Exposure, Sources, Risk characterization, Policies INTRODUCTION People are exposed to a multitude of chemical, physical and biological stressors in their environment, some of which are apparently harmless, others of low health significance and some incur significant risks to health, at least for vulnerable individuals. Human exposure to environmental contaminants occurs via various pathways (air, water, food...) and routes of entry (inhalation, ingestion and dermal) (Jantunen and Carrer, 2007). Up to now National and European air quality policies have devoted most of their efforts towards the limitation of outdoor environmental concentrations for some specific pollutants resulting from industrial activities, heat and power generation and automobile traffic. But exposure via air occurs outdoors and also in different indoor µenvironments; e.g. home, workplace, schools and transports. Indoor air pollution from different sources may cause or aggravate illnesses, increase

2 mortality, and have major economic and social impacts. Although there is no reason to relax the society s preoccupation towards outdoors regulations, it is now recognized that more attention must certainly be paid to indoor exposures to air pollution in policy making in order to 1) better characterise, understand and assess the contribution of indoor spaces to environmental diseases; and 2) set up coherent policies as regards the reduction of those exposures. Indoor air quality is now acknowledged to be an important determinant of health and comfort, as evidenced for example by the inclusion of indoor air quality in the European Commission research strategy for the Seventh Framework Programme. However, the complexity of pollution sources and the multitude of parties responsible for generating and potentially acting to control indoor air pollution make the coherent development of risk reduction strategies difficult. To be effective, any policies directed at improving indoor air quality need to be part of a comprehensive management strategy involving governments, institutions, professional bodies and individuals (Harrison, 2007). The political relevance of the theme is illustrated by two recent initiatives: The World Health Organization convened a working group for the development of indoor air quality guidelines gathering scientific expertise in epidemiology, toxicology, exposure assessment, developing country issues, indoor combustion, biological agents, building construction, ventilation and indoor air quality management (WHO, 2007) and DG SANCO (Public Health Directorate of EC) created an indoor air quality expert group to contribute for the implementation of the EC Environment and Health action plan in what regards indoor air quality. A broad survey of what currently exists in the indoor air field shows very few projects dealing specifically with indoor and health as it is the case for THADE (Franchi et al., 2006), NORA (Mendell et al., 2002), and for some special reports, such as INDEX (Kotzias et al., 2005) and SCHER (SCHER, 2007). In the framework of EnVIE, a comprehensive review of the existing EC projects was made. Many of those projects were undertaken on the frame of EC R&D programmes focused on energy and comfort in buildings and on environment or health. The knowledge is spread over many different approaches and not only connected with indoor issues. Therefore, EnVIE is an opportunity to further exploit relevant results some of which have not yet been given proper visibility and consideration. OBJECTIVES The objective of this project is to increase the understanding and contribute to the evaluation of health impacts of indoor air quality. It especially focus on the assessment of policy relevance of research into the health effects of isolated agents and mixtures, and consider the implications for thresholds and safety margins for the general population and for people at work. It will address in particular how indoor air quality contributes to the observed rise in asthma and respiratory allergy in Europe as well as in other acute and chronic health impacts. European citizens want to live longer and healthier in an environment of low involuntary risks, and at an affordable cost. Urban environmental policies should, therefore, manage the determinants of health as far upstream as possible and improve the citizens quality of life. Since policy-relevant interpretation of research results is developed as a systematic output of EnVIE, the impact to be expected concerns directly policy making in the field of indoor air quality, aiming at the health protection of European citizens. EnVIE should help to clarify several issues, which are closely linked in the policy management of the indoor air.

3 Nevertheless, the overall impact of EnVIE for European citizens is certainly to be considered in the long term, when the implementation of the most appropriate policies to control indoor air pollution will have produced their effects. The EnVIE scientific network will also attempt to contribute to transfer the feedback from European and national policy makers to the scientific community in order to better orient their future research needs. METHOD To respond to the objectives, EnVIE has identified the three major and complementary categories of issues as key questions regarding indoor air, estimated manageable in terms of scientific and technical proximity: health effects, exposure and characterisation of spaces and sources. Since the aim of EnVIE is to aggregate building blocks, interfacing sciences and policy making, EnVIE specifically consider the issue of integration and policy interface. Significant attention is also paid to the dissemination, in particular, through the organisation of the EnVIE conferences, production of reports and its website. In order to focus on the indoor exposures and policies, which are most relevant for health, the work of EnVIE does not follow the common path from source emissions, released agents, exposures and their various potential health impacts. Instead, EnVIE departs from the public health problems and concerns, which are most strongly associated with indoor environments; identifies the most relevant indoor exposures, which could cause these health problems; proceeds to the most abundant indoor sources of these exposures; and then evaluates the potentials of different policies to mitigate the overall indoor health problems - see Figure 1. The objective is maximum policy relevance, i.e., to focus at each step on a short list of the most important issues, rather than trying to find all possibilities that might also play a role. Figure 1. EnVIE method.

4 Many previous indoor air quality and policy assessments have taken specific contaminants or indoor sources as the starting points. The logic behind is the flow of molecules from sources via environment to exposure, dose and the consequent health outcome. Meanwhile it was realized that, basically because of the lack of toxicological information and the enormous number of pollutants, the relationship cause vs effects was showing to be quite difficult. EnVIE introduces what can be called the EnVIE Method on how to approach the relationship causes vs effects and its consequence on drawing strategies and policies. This method follows an opposite logic, starting from the most pronounced indoor air related health outcomes (which may have also other sources and causes), then identifying the most widespread indoor air exposures which are likely to cause these health outcomes, and the most common sources which dominate the indoor air exposures. The 1 st objective of this method is o to focus from the start on those indoor air quality issues of the highest Europe-wide health relevance. Having defined a shortlist of such indoor source-exposure-health chains, the project evaluates the policy alternatives for minimising the unwanted health consequences in terms of achievable public health benefits, invasiveness, as well as political, legal, technological, economical and social feasibility. The 2 nd objective is o to identify and describe a set of highly beneficial and feasible indoor air quality policy alternatives. Europe wide applicability brings the benefits of enhanced competition in a broader marketplace. DELIVERABLES The formal outcome of EnVIE, besides all fora and interactions with the scientific and policy making actors is expressed in two sets of proceedings corresponding to two major Conferences, the 1 st held in June 2007 (proceedings already at and the 2 nd being planned for September 2008, The 1 st EnVIE Conference covered selected issues from health outcomes, via exposures to sources and the 2 nd EnVIE Conference will focus pretty much on alternatives on source control policies, evaluating the achievable exposure and health impact gains, as well as the other requirements and consequences of those alternatives. The EnVIE Final Report will consist of the edited EnVIE Conferences proceedings complemented with a general introduction and an executive summary, which will also include the general recommendations on indoor air health related policies. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EnVIE is funded by EC 6 FP Scientific Support to Policy contract SSPE-CT ( This project is based on a core group of participants from the European Collaborative Action Urban Air, Indoor Environment and Human Exposure together with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and World Health Organisation (WHO) and it shall complement the work programme of the Joint Research Centre to avoid duplication.

5 REFERENCES Carrer, P., Fanetti, A.C., Forastiere, F., Holcatova, I., Mølhave, L., Simoni, M., Sundell, J. and Viegi, G., EnVIE Project: Most important indoor air related health effects. In: Proceedings of the 11 th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate Indoor Air 2008, Copenhagen. Franchi, M., Carrer, P., Kotzias, D., Rameckers, E., Seppänen, O., van Bronswijk, J., Viegi, G., Gilder, J.A. and Valovirta, E., Working towards healthy air in dwellings in Europe. Allergy, 61(7): Harrison, P., Indoor air policy perspectives. In: Proceedings of the 1 st EnVIE Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Health for EU Policy, Helsinki, pp Jantunen, M. and Carrer, P., Introduction of EnVIE concept and overview of EnVIE project. In: Proceedings of the 1 st EnVIE Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Health for EU Policy, Helsinki, pp Jantunen, M., Kunseler, E., Fernandes, E.O., Loh, M., Seppänen, O. and Carrer, P., Risk characterisation in the indoor environment: The 1 st EnVIE Conference. In: Proceedings of the 11 th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate Indoor Air 2008, Copenhagen. Kotzias, D. et al INDEX project. Critical appraisal of the setting and implementation of indoor exposure limits in the EU. EUR EN. European Commission, Directorate General, Joint Research Centre. Mendell, M.J., Fisk, W.J., Kreiss, K. et al, Improving the health of workers in indoor environments: priority research area needs for a national occupational research agenda. American J Public Health, 92, 9: Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER), Preliminary report on risk assessment on indoor air quality. European Commission - Health & Consumer Protection DG. WHO, Development of WHO Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality. Report on a Working Group Meeting Bonn, Germany, October World Health Organization - Regional Office for Europe, EUR/05/