Local environmental health concerns: risk communication, exposure assessment and cluster investigation

Concerned citizens are increasingly contacting local authorities to ask whether seemingly unusually large numbers of similar health complaints or disorders in their neighbourhood (a ‘disease cluster’) may be related to exposure to local environmental factors. The President of the Health Council of the Netherlands consequently instructed an ad hoc Health Council Committee to produce an advisory report on epidemiological research methods in response to public concerns about local environmental health issues and aspects of risk perception and risk communication.

Committee

• RM Meertens, psychologist; University of Maastricht, chair
• C van den Bogaard, medical-environmental inspector; Environment Inspectorate - Central Office, The Hague, advisor
• E Lebret, epidemiologist; National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven
• FE van Leeuwen, professor of cancer epidemiology, Free University, Amsterdam; Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam
• YM Mulder, epidemiologist; TNO Prevention & Health, Leiden
• WF Passchier, professor by special appointment of risk analysis, Universiteit of Maastricht/deputy executive director of the Health Council of the Netherlands, The Hague, advisor
• JJL Pieters, inspector non-infectious diseases; Health Care Inspectorate, The Hague, advisor
• MM Verberk, epidemiologist/toxicologist; University Medical Centre, Amsterdam
• F Woudenberg, psychologist; Municipal Health Service of Rotterdam
• M Drijver, Health Council of the Netherlands, The Hague, secretary