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| Vol. 25, No. 8 |
| May 1, 2003 |
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The Role of Environmental Pollutants in Chronic Diseases By PORFIRIO VILLARREAL Houston Department of Health and Human Services The Houston Department of Health and Human Services is one of only two city health departments in the country awarded a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track environmental hazards and exposures that lead to chronic diseases such as asthma, birth defects, developmental disabilities, cancers and neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The Houston health department will receive $298,000 for the three-year project as part of the CDC’s plan to create a national environmental public health tracking network. As a first step toward development of the network, the CDC awarded grants of various amounts to 18 state and two city health departments - New York City and Houston - and three schools of public health. The grant will make it possible for the health department to collect, integrate, analyze and interpret data about persistent organic pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin, heavy metals such as mercury and lead, pesticides, air contaminants like toluene, and drinking water contaminants. The project will identify what and where the environmental hazards are in Houston and whether people are at risk from exposure. “Houston embodies the ideal location to pilot a regional tracking project since sources of pollution are scattered across the city,” said Isaac Joyner, administrative supervisor in the health department’s Health Planning and Evaluation unit. “In essence, people and pollution sources are close neighbors.” Although limits exist on the amounts of some pollutants that can be released into the environment, the United States has never had a system capable of tracking or linking pollutants to human diseases. Aside from establishing a correlation between pollutants and disease, the network will be able to help identify populations at risk, organize a response to clusters and emerging threats, guide intervention and prevention strategies, and educate the public and health community about environmental hazards and exposures. Chronic diseases are responsible for four of every five deaths annually in the United States, the Pew Environmental Health Commission at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health concluded in its 2000 report “America’s Environmental Health Gap: Why the Country Needs a Nationwide Health Tracking Network.” The report found that 100 million people suffer from a chronic disease each year and cost the nation $325 billion in annual health care and lost productivity. Through its report, the commission was the first to propose the creation of the network. As examples of the environmental health gap, the nation’s failure to deal with chronic diseases and their potential links to environmental hazards, the commission noted that more than half of all states lack ongoing tracking and monitoring of asthma even though it is a rapidly growing national epidemic; most states fail to track developmental disabilities such as autism and mental retardation, despite an estimated 50 percent rise nationwide in these disabilities in the last decade and research indicating that 25 percent are related to environmental exposures; only four states track autoimmune diseases such as lupus even though rates for these diseases are rising; and less than half the nation’s population is covered by birth defect registries, even though birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States and rates for certain birth defects and related conditions are increasing. The Houston health department’s Health Planning and Evaluation unit will manage the project locally. Currently, the unit is working on developing contracts to secure technical support, an analysis of laws surrounding environmental tracking, and consulting services on toxicology and environmental hazards. It is also working on a contract with an information technology firm to craft a plan to link up electronic systems that store data on diseases, pollutants and environmental monitoring.
©2006 Texas Medical Center E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/05_01_03/page_06.html |