Update on World Health Organization's initiative to assess environmental burden of disease

∗ This work was in part supported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Cooperative Agreement 82 6570 –01-0. The content does not necessarily reflect the views of this Agency, nor of the World Health Organization. Copyright © 2001 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. In August 2000, the World Health Organization organised an expert consultation on Methodology for the assessment of the environmental burden of disease (EBD) in Buffalo, NY, to further advance the agenda of quantifying health impacts caused by environmental factors. The consultation took place following the 12 Annual Meeting of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, which also dedicated a special symposium to the environmental burden of disease. This Symposium reported on the progress on estimating the health impacts of indoor air pollution, noise, lead and climate change. Current efforts build on previous results obtained in the 1997 consultation “Methods for Health Impact Assessment in Environmental and Occupational Health”, to which Epidemiology devoted a special section in the September 1999 issue (1). This consultation was part of WHO’s intensified effort to develop methods and support countries by providing guidance to assess their environmental burden of disease in a consistent way. The Consultation was part of an ongoing process aiming at the following: