Rudi Torfs

Environmental burden of disease in Europe : assessing nine risk factors in six countries

Background: Environmental health effects vary considerably with regard to their severity, type of disease, and duration. Integrated measures of population health, such as environmental burden of disease (EBD), are useful for setting priorities in environmental health policies and research. This review is a summary of the full Environmental Burden of Disease in European countries (EBoDE) project report. Objectives: The EBoDE project was set up to provide assessments for nine environmental risk factors relevant in selected European countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands). Methods: Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were estimated for benzene, dioxins, secondhand smoke, formaldehyde, lead, traffic noise, ozone, particulate matter (PM2.5), and radon, using primarily World Health Organization data on burden of disease, (inter)national exposure data, and epidemiological or toxicological risk estimates. Results are presented here without discounting or age-weighting. Results: About 3–7% of the annual burden of disease in the participating countries is associated with the included environmental risk factors. Airborne particulate matter (diameter ≤ 2.5 μm; PM2.5) is the leading risk factor associated with 6,000–10,000 DALYs/year and 1 million people. Secondhand smoke, traffic noise (including road, rail, and air traffic noise), and radon had overlapping estimate ranges (600–1,200 DALYs/million people). Some of the EBD estimates, especially for dioxins and formaldehyde, contain substantial uncertainties that could be only partly quantified. However, overall ranking of the estimates seems relatively robust. Conclusions: With current methods and data, environmental burden of disease estimates support meaningful policy evaluation and resource allocation, including identification of susceptible groups and targets for efficient exposure reduction. International exposure monitoring standards would enhance data quality and improve comparability. Citation: Hänninen O, Knol AB, Jantunen M, Lim TA, Conrad A, Rappolder M, Carrer P, Fanetti AC, Kim R, Buekers J, Torfs R, Iavarone I, Classen T, Hornberg C, Mekel OC, EBoDE Working Group. 2014. Environmental burden of disease in Europe: assessing nine risk factors in six countries. Environ Health Perspect 122:439–446; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1206154

TRENDS AND UNCERTAINTY IN AIR POLLUTION IMPACTS AND EXTERNAL COSTS OF BELGIAN PASSENGER CAR TRAFFIC

The main objective of this paper is to track the changing importance of air pollution impacts by Belgian passenger cars. Our assessment of environmental impacts is based on the calculation of external costs with the ExternE methodology. Our results show that the decline of air pollution impacts from Belgian passenger cars between 1993 and 1998 was limited. This is explained by the combination of three contributing factors the slow turnover of the fleet, the typical Belgian high and growing percentage of diesel fuelled passenger cars and the annual increase of the average mileage per car. The secondary objective is to investigate to what degree the choice of emission factors influences our conclusions. Although estimates of the overall cost of air pollution derived from MEET and Infras are similar, the trend towards improved air quality is more pronounced for MEET.

Application of the maximum cumulative ratio (MCR) as a screening tool for the evaluation of mixtures in residential indoor air

The maximum cumulative ratio (MCR) method allows the categorisation of mixtures according to whether the mixture is of concern for toxicity and if so whether this is driven by one substance or multiple substances. The aim of the present study was to explore, by application of the MCR approach, whether health risks due to indoor air pollution are dominated by one substance or are due to concurrent exposure to various substances. Analysis was undertaken on monitoring data of four European indoor studies (giving five datasets), involving 1800 records of indoor air or personal exposure. Application of the MCR methodology requires knowledge of the concentrations of chemicals in a mixture together with health-based reference values for those chemicals. For this evaluation, single substance health-based reference values (RVs) were selected through a structured review process. The MCR analysis found high variability in the proportion of samples of concern for mixture toxicity. The fraction of samples in these groups of concern varied from 2% (Flemish schools) to 77% (EXPOLIS, Basel, indoor), the variation being due not only to the variation in indoor air contaminant levels across the studies but also to other factors such as differences in number and type of substances monitored, analytical performance, and choice of RVs. However, in 4 out of the 5 datasets, a considerable proportion of cases were found where a chemical-by-chemical approach failed to identify the need for the investigation of combined risk assessment. Although the MCR methodology applied in the current study provides no consideration of commonality of endpoints, it provides a tool for discrimination between those mixtures requiring further combined risk assessment and those for which a single-substance assessment is sufficient.

ExternE: A European Accounting Framework for Life Cycle Impact Assessment and External Costs of Transport

ABSTRACT This paper discuss draft final results of a European research project (1998-2000) concerning the assessment of life cycle impacts on man and the environment and external costs of a wide variety of transportation technologies. The methodology is based on the ExternE (Externalities of Energy) Accounting framework. It allows to quantify and monetise impacts on public health, agriculture and materials, but ecological impacts could not be monetised. It results in external cost data that are site, trajectory and vehicle specific but on this basis more aggregated and generic data have been used. This also allows calculating external costs related to the supply of fuels, vehicles and infrastructure. Overall, it shows that external environmental costs of transport are significant. For Belgium, notwithstanding stricter standards for new vehicles, overall external costs of passenger car traffic have hardly been reduced.

Exposure of Cyclists to Ultra Fine Particles

We present results from the Belgian SHAPES project, a policy oriented research project in which all major cycling related health risks are evaluated in an objective way. In this paper we present a methodology to estimate the exposure of ultra fine particulate matter (UFP numbers) to cyclists and results of measurements performed while cycling in real traffic. Methodology validation trials indicate that measured concentrations of UFP are independent of sampling direction (relative to cycling direction) and sampling height (between 0.9 and 1.6 m). Cyclists are exposed to frequent but short bursts of UFP, associated with motorized vehicles, even when cycling on the upwind side of the road. Concentrations range from below 10,000 to 500,000 cm−3. Peaks are related to the exhaust emissions of specific vehicles. UFP numbers quickly decrease with increasing distance from the road (approximately –6% m−1). There was no evidence for an effect of wind direction and dispersion at short range seems to be caused primarily by turbulence. Using this new methodology SHAPES will be able to determine the dose of UFP inhaled by cyclists compared to car users.

Comparing the impact of a road tunnel vs. a road viaduct by means of an integrated exposure assessment

Using the MOBILEE methodology, we performed a detailed air quality assessment for three scenarios for the ring road around Antwerp, a major city in Belgium, using PM10 and NOx emission inventories for 2003 (reference) and 2015 (projected future situation), followed by an assessment of the exposure of the population living in the vicinity of the planned constructions. PM10 turned out to be the dominant parameter in exposure assessment. Compared with the impact of the viaduct, a tunnel with an exhaust at a height of 5 or 30 m shows respectively a 40% increase or a 5% decrease in total exposure.

Environmental Burden of Disease in European Countries—The EBoDE Project

The experts participating in the Environmental Burden of Disease – European countries project agreed on the specific tasks and timetable. The steering group and specific task groups were established. The first project results should be ready for presentation at the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health in March 2010 in Parma, Italy. Address requests about publications of the WHO Regional Office for Europe to: Publications WHO Regional Office for Europe Scherfigsvej 8 DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark Alternatively, complete an online request form for documentation, health information, or for permission to quote or translate, on the Regional Office web site (http://www.euro.who.int/pubrequest).

Modeling Human Exposure to Cadmium and Arsenic in a Zinc Smelter Area-A Belgian Case Study

[Standaert, Arnout; Van Holderbeke, Mirja; Cornelis, Christa; Van Deun, Jeroen; Torfs, Rudi] VITO Flemish Inst Technol Res, Mol, Belgium. [Van Campenhout, Karen] Flemish Govt, Environm Nat & Engergy Dept, Mechelen, Belgium. [Van Gestel, Griet] OVAM Publ Waste Agcy Flanders, Mechelen, Belgium. [Wildemeersch, Dirk] Flemish Govt, Flemish Agcy Care & Hlth, Brussels, Belgium. [Nelen, Vera] PIH Prov Inst Hyg, Antwerp, Belgium. [Bruckers, Liesbeth] Univ Hasselt, Hasselt, Belgium.