Do environmental policies actually protect public health? Developing indicators of policy impact

The fundamental goal of our environmental policies is to protect public health and the environment. Are they working? Recent EPA Reports on the Environment provide a comprehensive national level profile of key environmental indicators. These indicators have documented marked improvement in the pollution levels for some pathways and contaminants. However, most measures report compliance with standards rather than actual concentrations, exposures, or health risks. Furthermore, the data for many of these national indicators are only available for recent years and progress at state and local levels is not documented. This limited data hinders capacity to assess long-term trends and public health impacts of major environmental policies implemented during the 1970s and 1980s. After being identified as the state with highest overall cancer mortality in the 1975 Atlas of Cancer Mortality for US Counties, New Jersey established the Office of Cancer and Toxic Substances Research within the Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). NJDEP investigations provided some of the nation's first multimedia data on toxics and demonstrated models of policy change. For example, the early statewide evaluation of groundwater revealed wide ranging presence of toxic contaminants and provided the impetus for advancement of state and federal safe drinking water actions. Working in collaboration with NJDEP our project will develop environmental health indicators both before and after the implementation of major environmental policies to assess long-term trends and public health impacts. We will describe the project aims, the conceptual framework, key policies and target pollutants, the risk assessment approach and progress to date.