A prospective health impact review of the redevelopment of Central Manchester Hospitals

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is increasingly being acknowledged as an important tool for considering the health implications of projects and programmes of activity at local, national and international levels. However, standard HIA tools can be difficult to apply when the policy of programme under consideration is particularly complex and intertwined or where significant time, resource and skill constraints are involved. This paper describes a Health Impact Review (HIR) of the plans for a major redevelopment of Central Manchester Hospitals (England). This approach to HIA drew not only from HIR but also from Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) in order to produce a summary of the most significant health impacts of a policy, programme or project in a more timely and cost-effective way. This example highlights the potential for involving Local Authority Overview and Scrutiny Committees in the HIA process as a way of ensuring that the recommendations of HIA are mainstreamed as part of the ongoing development of projects.     

Evaluating the impact of HIA on urban reconstruction decision-making. Who manages whose risks?

Practitioners and academic researchers increasingly look to evaluation of health impact assessment (HIA) to improve its practice, its efficiency and its legitimacy. Evaluation is also used to account to policy-makers, who express doubts that the benefits of HIA justify its costs. Until recently evaluation of HIA focused on instrument design and procedures but now the focus needs to shift to analysis of the interaction of HIA and decision-making. Multiple case studies have been applied to identify the conditions in which HIA produces the desired benefits. These studies used analytical concepts derived from the literature on evaluation, knowledge utilization, science of sociology and knowledge management.This paper describes a case study in which the strategic motives of the decision-makers affected the impact of an HIA. This HIA comprised of a quantitative environmental model ‘City & Environment’ that was used to assess environmental health impacts of an urban reconstruction plan in a Dutch city. The evaluation of the HIA shows that the decision to follow the recommendations of the HIA was part of a damage control strategy. The more HIA goals deviate from the policy problem and the less HIA is embedded in institutional procedures, then the more HIA impact will be subject to strategic decision-making behaviour. Appropriate cognitive and social strategies are needed to avoid ‘negative learning’ in those the HIA seeks to influence.     

Developing a framework to assess costs and benefits of Health Impact Assessment

This paper presents some early thinking as to how the costs and benefits of HIA might be assessed. After considering previous work it uses a comprehensive HIA in Dulwich, SE London as a case study to highlight the possibilities and difficulties of collecting necessary data on costs and benefits. It then sets a context for developing a cost–benefit framework for analysis. The framework is viewed alongside the major types of economic evaluation. The paper concludes with a review of outstanding issues and considers how evidence on cost and benefit might make a difference in the application of HIA.     

The long time scales of the climate–economy feedback and the climatic cost of growth

This paper is based on the perception that the inertia of climate and socio-economic systems are key parameters in the climate change issue. In a first part, it develops and implements a new approach based on a simple integrated model with a particular focus on an innovative transient impact and adaptation modeling. In a second part, a climate–economy feedback is defined and characterized. The following results were found. 1) It has a long characteristic time, which lies between 50 and 100 years depending on the hypotheses; this time scale is long when compared to the system's other time scales, and the feedback cannot act as a natural damping process of climate change. 2) Mitigation has to be anticipated since the feedback of an emission reduction on the economy can be significant only after a 20-year delay and is really efficient only after at least 50 years. 3) Even discounted, production changes due to an action on emissions are significant over more than one century. 4) The methodology of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which neglects the feedback from impacts to emissions, is acceptable up to 2100, whatever is the level of impacts. This analysis allows also to define a climatic cost of growth as the additional climate change damages due to the additional emissions linked to economic growth.

Developing a National Indicator of Soil Quality on U.S Forestlands: Methods and Initial Results

The Montreal Process was formed in 1994 to develop an internationally agreed upon set of criteria and indicators for the conservation and sustainable management of temperate and boreal forests. In response to this initiative, the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) and Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) programs of the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service have implemented soil measurements as part of a national monitoring program to address specific questions related to the conservation of soil and water resources. Integration of soil assessments into the national FIA program provides for systematic monitoring of soil properties across all forested regions of the U.S. using standardized collection, laboratory, and statistical procedures that are compatible with existing forest inventory data. The resulting information will provide quantitative benchmarks for regional, national, and international reporting on sustainable forest management and enhance our understanding of management effects on soil quality. This paper presents an overview of the FIA soil monitoring program, outlines the field and laboratory protocols as currently implemented, and provides examples of how these data may be used to assess indicators of sustainable management as defined by the Montreal Process.     

Comparing Environmental Flow Implementation Options with Structured Decision Making: Case Study from the Willamette River,Oregon

Many frameworks have been used to identify environmental flows for sustaining river ecosystems or specific taxa in the face of widespread flow alteration. However, these frameworks largely focus on identifying suitable flows and often ignore the important links between management actions, resulting flows, and valued ecosystem or social responses. Structured decision making (SDM) could assist the comparison of environmental flows by providing a mature framework to link management actions to objectives via environmental flow science. We describe SDM and illustrate its application using a case study focused on comparing environmental flow scenarios for the mainstem Willamette River, Oregon. In a short timeframe, SDM was applied to identify objectives, develop empirical and expert opinion‐based models, and compare flow scenarios while accounting for interannual flow variability and partial controllability. No scenario was clearly preferred based on available knowledge, largely because river flows could only be partially controlled through dam operations. Participants agreed that SDM was useful for comparing alternative dam operations, but that refined predictive models and additional objectives were needed to better inform basinwide flow decisions. In our view, SDM can provide more realistic comparisons of environmental flows by accounting for partial controllability and uncertainty, which may result in greater implementation of available flow management actions.     

北京市大气污染减排潜力及居民健康效益评估

北京市能源消费正面临着污染物减排和保障居民健康的双重约束. 针对未来城市能源消费设计BAU(基准情景)和2个分别基于近期和中长期节能环保要求的受控情景(EC1、EC2),模拟预测了3个情景下主要大气污染物(SO₂、NO_x、PM₁₀、PM_2.5)在目标年(2020年)的排放水平,以确定大气污染减排潜力. 分别采用综合暴露-反应关系模型(IER)和泊松回归模型,评估北京市居民对PM_2.5暴露的健康风险,估算健康损失的经济价值. 结果表明:相较BAU情景,在EC1情景下, SO₂、NO_x、PM₁₀、PM_2.5减排率分别达到52.95%、49.77%、32.82%、41.41%,可减少PM_2.5暴露下居民死亡和发病219 783例,其中死亡1 295例、住院3 920例、门诊182 558例、患病32 011例,获得健康效益111.87×108元;在EC2情景下,SO₂、NO_x、PM₁₀、PM_2.5的减排率分别达到66.61%、63.42%、54.96%、57.44%,可减少PM_2.5暴露下居民死亡和发病519 234例,其中死亡2 930例、住院9 248例、门诊427 070例、患病79 986例,获得健康效益290.10×108元. 相较EC1情景,EC2情景可产生更大的减排潜力和居民健康效益. 从空间分布上来看,北京主城区因能源方案优化获得的健康效益较大,约占总健康经济效益的60%.      

我国海洋工程海洋环境影响后评价方法初探——以温州灵霓北堤工程海洋环境影响后评价为例

海洋工程竣工投产后,其造成的海洋环境负面影响往往超过工程施工前开展的海洋环境影响评价中的预测值,开展海洋工程海洋环境影响后评价工作是近几年来国外海洋发达国家海洋工程管理方面应用较为成熟的一种管理手段。温州灵霓北堤工程是我国首个实施海洋环境影响后评价的工程,在其竣工通车2 a后,为了检验灵霓北堤对瓯江口南北两侧海域的实际海洋环境影响以及前期环境评价单位,温州市发改委委托中国海洋大学展开环境影响后评价工作。中国海洋大学根据海域现状和历史调查资料,采用有无对比、前后对比和数学模型预测的方法,针对工程前期评价单位的预测与结论,评价了灵霓北堤两侧海域海洋环境质量现状,并对前期环评结论的合理性和正确性开展了分析。后评价结果表明,前期评价单位的预测结果基本都已得到体现,但其部分预测值较保守,例如部分区域的冲淤量和灵霓北堤对两侧生物的影响等。     

水生态系统健康评价研究进展

河湖水环境管理与生态系统健康评价密切相关,水生态系统健康评价是目前水环境管理重要的技术手段之一,可为合理开发利用水资源和水环境生态恢复提供科学指导,对水生态环境监测和管理具有重要意义。列举当前国内外研究河湖水生态系统健康的方法与技术,通过对比分析国内外河湖水生态系统健康评价的评价指标和优缺点,总结了常用的几种评价方法并展开评述,提出未来河湖生态管理的发展方向,为推进水环境治理等工作提供相应的参考。     

Volatile organic compounds at swine facilities: A critical review

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are regulated aerial pollutants that have environmental and health concerns. Swine operations produce and emit a complex mixture of VOCs with a wide range of molecular weights and a variety of physicochemical properties. Significant progress has been made in this area since the first experiment on VOCs at a swine facility in the early 1960s. A total of 47 research institutions in 15 North American, European, and Asian countries contributed to an increasing number of scientific publications. Nearly half of the research papers were published by U.S. institutions.Investigated major VOC sources included air inside swine barns, in headspaces of manure storages and composts, in open atmosphere above swine wastewater, and surrounding swine farms. They also included liquid swine manure and wastewater, and dusts inside and outside swine barns. Most of the sample analyses have been focusing on identification of VOC compounds and their relationship with odors. More than 500 VOCs have been identified. About 60% and 10% of the studies contributed to the quantification of VOC concentrations and emissions, respectively. The largest numbers of VOC compounds with reported concentrations in a single experimental study were 82 in air, 36 in manure, and 34 in dust samples.The relatively abundant VOC compounds that were quantified in at least two independent studies included acetic acid, butanoic acid (butyric acid), dimethyl disulfide, dimethyl sulfide, iso-valeric, p-cresol, propionic acid, skatole, trimethyl amine, and valeric acid in air. They included acetic acid, p-cresol, iso-butyric acid, butyric acid, indole, phenol, propionic acid, iso-valeric acid, and skatole in manure. In dust samples, they were acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, p-cresol, hexanal, and decanal. Swine facility VOCs were preferentially bound to smaller-size dusts.Identification and quantification of VOCs were restricted by using instruments based on gas Chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) with different detectors most of which require time-consuming procedures to obtain results. Various methodologies and technologies in sampling, sample preparation, and sample analysis have been used. Only four publications reported using GC based analyzers and PTR-MS (proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry) that allowed continuous VOC measurement. Because of this, the majority of experimental studies were only performed on limited numbers of air, manure, or dust samples. Many aerial VOCs had concentrations that were too low to be identified by the GC peaks.Although VOCs emitted from swine facilities have environmental concerns, only a few studies investigated VOC emission rates, which ranged from 3.0 to 176.5 mg d⁻¹ kg⁻¹ pig at swine finishing barns and from 2.3 to 45.2 g d⁻¹ m⁻² at manure storages. Similar to the other pollutants, spatial and temporal variations of aerial VOC concentrations and emissions existed and were significantly affected by manure management systems, barn structural designs, and ventilation rates.Scientific research in this area has been mainly driven by odor nuisance, instead of environment or health concerns. Compared with other aerial pollutants in animal agriculture, the current scientific knowledge about VOCs at swine facilities is still very limited and far from sufficient to develop reliable emission factors.