 Translating health concerns into air quality regulations: Roundtable discussion
CSE’s Health and Environment unit (HEU) invites you to a round table session: "Translating health concerns into air quality regulations", on Friday, November 22, 2002 at CSE’s India Habitat Centre office. This interface will bring together medical practitioners, health experts and air quality managers in an attempt to share knowledge and experiences on ways to understand the health impacts of air pollution for better air quality management in our cities. We are not alone in Asia to face the challenge of dangerously high levels of air pollution and its alarming health impacts. In fact, we have not even begun to understand the magnitude of the problem. But in more advanced countries, the prime mover of government policy and action on air pollution control is the availability of credible local health evidence of impacts of air pollution on public health. The questions we hope to raise at the discussion include: Do we know enough about the health impacts of air pollution in Indian cities? How do we build our scientific capacity to arrive at more specific local estimates of health impacts that can influence the decision-making process? Can we learn from our collective wisdom, experiences and constraints to meet the challenge? We firmly believe that solutions to air pollution crisis in our cities will emerge from a deeper understanding of risks to public health. Dr Daniel Greenbaum, President, Health Effects Institute, Boston, USA, along with his colleague Robert O Keefe, together with Dr Shankar Prasad, Community Health Advisor to the Chairman, California Air Resources Board will discuss the preparedness for health impact analysis and how health guidelines can be built into air quality regulations to protect public health. We would appreciate if you shared experiences and suggestions on how to develop capacity to assess health impacts of air pollution in the region to combat one of the most serious public health crisis confronting us. For more information, contact: |