earticle

영어

Recently, the demand of environmental epidemiology studies is being increased because many peoples who are living in urban or industrial area worry about adverse health effect of environmental pollution as well as deterioration of comfortable resident environment. Especially, many peoples want and expect that environmental epidemiology studies can make more practical results than other studies, since environmental epidemiology studies are concerned with human population directly. In this paper, we reviewed the status of environmental epidemiology studies, especially on industrial complex area, in Korea, and explored the countermeasure in the field of environmental epidemiology which take environmental health problems into consideration. After middle of 1990's, environmental epidemiology studies in Korea have been developed qualitatively and quantitatively. But there is much to be desired in the side of contribution to public health through practical environmental policy. Until now, most of environmental epidemiology studies in Korea were to assess acute health effect of air pollutants with existing data on which Air Quality Standard are established. Because most of studies which survey local residents directly were conducted cross-sectionally during short period, the results of these studies were difficult to be accepted confirmatively. When we consider changes of environmental health problems and applicable knowledge and technique, studies that would be conducted in a long-term to obtain some results are needed, along with various studies that can present available results in a short-term. In this point of view, we introduced new epidemiological surveillance project of NIER which is designed to toxic chemicals that have a high priority in health effect, considered potential development of molecular epidemiology, and performed for long period, since 2003, in Ulsan industrial complex area. At these process, although environmental epidemiology studies failed to present adverse health effects of pollution, these results should be accepted carefully because there are many limitations of environmental epidemiology. In these cases, precautionary principle can be considered as an alternative for protecting our rights for environment and health.