Print
See related documents
Recommendation 1863 (2009)
Environment and health: better prevention of environment-related health hazards
1. The Parliamentary
Assembly, like other international organisations such as the European
Union, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Environment
Agency, notes that there are increasing links between environmental
pollution and ever greater and more obvious health risks. Environment-related pathologies
are not confined to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases or specific
types of cancer, but include other chronic and emerging pathologies
such as immune system impairment, neurological and neurodegenerative
illnesses and disruptions of the hormonal and reproductive system.
2. Since embryos, foetuses, neonates and children are even more
sensitive to environmental factors than adults, the Assembly alerts
all governments and all the responsible organisations and stakeholders
to the need to protect or restore a healthy environment and thus
guarantee the future of our children and future generations.
3. The Assembly has repeatedly stressed the importance of states’
commitment to preserving the environment and environmental health
as set out in many conferences, charters, conventions, declarations
and protocols since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
and the Stockholm Declaration (Stockholm, 1972). It more particularly
welcomes the research efforts and action plans launched since the WHO-Europe
Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health (Budapest,
2004).
4. The Assembly nevertheless regrets that, despite calls for
the precautionary principle and despite all the recommendations,
declarations and a number of statutory and legislative advances,
there is still a lack of reaction to known or emerging environmental
and health risks and the virtually systematic delays in adopting and
implementing effective preventive measures. There has thus been
little improvement in the situation of multiple and chronic exposure
to multiform pollution and environmental pathologies are still as
worrying as ever.
5. In the light of the known results of scientific expertise
in this field, it considers that the political authorities must
act in order to prevent disease and health crises.
6. The Assembly stresses the importance of all forms of prevention
and early detection where environmental health policy is concerned,
and believes that, above all, primary prevention of environmental risks
must be encouraged.
7. Risk assessment must be based solely on scientific criteria,
which means that it must be shielded from any kind of pressure exerted
by the political authorities or economic lobbies, and must take
account of the often insidious effects of chronic exposure to low
or very low doses of a range of pollutants working in combination. Even
in small doses, a cocktail of pollutants in the air, water, food
and in everyday consumer products, and also in building materials
(such as asbestos), can have a serious effect on human health.
8. Such assessment must above all take account of the fact that
it is not only the dose that makes the poison but also the period
of exposure, the accumulative mechanisms and individual sensitivities
to pollutants or mixtures of pollutants.
9. For over twenty years, scientists, field doctors and environmental
physicians, as well as experts and environmental specialists, have
been alerting the public authorities and medical circles to the
new health risks and environmental pathologies arising out of the
insidious increase in pollution in all environments, in the food chain
and in the human organism itself.
10. The Assembly acknowledges the primordial role played by civil
society and associations working to protect the environment and
environmental health in terms not only of sounding the alarm and
denouncing health scandals but also of producing preventive strategies
and action plans.
11. Faced with the increasing risks to the environment, wildlife
and human health, particularly that of future generations, the Assembly
supports the research efforts being made at European and international
levels to assess, with the requisite degree of certainty, the impact
of low doses of chemical pollutants and ionising and non-ionising
radiation on human health.
12. The Assembly takes note of the fact that in the environmental
health field, all the players, including toxicologists, epidemiologists
and environmental physicians, agree that environmental pollution
has a negative impact on human health and advocate improving the
prevention of health disorders linked to such pollution. Environmental
medicine is a new transverse medical discipline which has been emerging
and developing for a number of years.
13. The Assembly notes that the number of individuals actually
suffering from diseases linked to the environment is regularly growing,
in an increasingly disturbing manner.
14. Stressing the need for urgent practical action to curb the
increase in known or emerging risks, the Assembly asks the Committee
of Ministers to invite member and observer states of the Council
of Europe to:
14.1. recognise the
close links between the environment and health and to provide co-ordinated,
strong policies in this area;
14.2. promote the positive health effects of access to a good
quality environment and recognise the negative health effects that
may result from poor environmental quality. This should be reflected
in the national public health document, which each member state
should submit to the Council of Europe Secretariat;
14.3. apply the precautionary principle in order to prevent
major and dramatic health crises in the future caused by environmental
risk factors;
14.4. ensure that scientific experts can work in an independent,
transparent and democratic manner in accordance with the principles
of adversarial and pluridisciplinary research;
14.5. guarantee the application of transparent criteria in the
choice of the different experts and to improve their status, as
well as to enhance the protection of whistle-blowers;
14.6. support actively the participation of civil society in
public adversarial debates on present and future technological choices,
challenges and acceptable risk levels (“impact assessment”);
14.7. intensify urgently and substantially the efforts to devise
a global policy for preventing chronic diseases associated with
the environment, as well as environmental health-policy action plans,
as an incentive for the sustainable and ecologically responsible
restructuring of all fields of political and human activity;
14.8. adopt prevention policies in all fields, in terms of consumer
food production and processing and service development, in order
to foster the development of a new health protection-oriented economy;
14.9. establish a clear communication channel between member
states on the health risks of pollution. This will enable the public
to make up their own minds about the impact of the environment on
their health, and make choices to improve their own health;
14.10. contribute actively to the establishment and reinforcement
of a more responsible chemical production policy, by withdrawing
from the market all carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic and neurotoxic substances,
implementing a firm substitution policy and encouraging industrialists
(by means of tax and financial measures) to move on to safer, less
polluting products;
14.11. support organic agriculture and regulate agricultural
production methods which use fewer pesticides, develop less polluting
modes of energy production, reduce the impact on health of road
traffic and promote a building policy that takes account of the
impact of construction and building materials on health;
14.12. take account of the warnings of the European Environment
Agency regarding electromagnetic pollution and specific health risks
attributed to mobile phone systems;
14.13. foster measures, in their prevention programmes or action
plans, to train and educate people in environmental health risks
at all levels of society, and to develop exchanges between experts
and citizens as well as between physicians and patients;
14.14. recognise environmental medicine as a new transverse medical
discipline and develop harmonised initial and further training programmes
for students and physicians at European level;
14.15. reinforce and ensure the general implementation, in connection
with the problem of pollution inside houses or buildings, of the
“green ambulance” system (mobile laboratories analysing homes and buildings
at the request of the individuals concerned, in liaison with their
family doctors, and the intervention and expertise of indoor environment
counsellors), and to provide new types of training courses for medical
advisers on the interior environment;
14.16. improve provision, through better reimbursement of diagnostic
and therapeutic expenses, for persons suffering from illnesses associated
with the environment, who often face major protracted suffering,
and large medical bills;
14.17. support actively, by means of subsidies, contracts and
partnership agreements, patients’ associations working in the field
of environmental health and diseases associated with the environment.
15. The Assembly asks the Committee of Ministers to instruct a
committee of experts to elaborate a draft recommendation based on
the elements above.