Knowledge Center |White Papers | December 31, 2007

Health, Environment, and Transport Officials Meet at National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Conference

How you feel, where you are, and how you get there are actually interconnected

On November 29-30, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and various interested corporate and governmental institutions hosted a Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine.  Discussion focused on the myriad priorities and changes involved in "Bringing Health to the Fuel Mixture" where the issues of environmental health, energy, and transportation methods and fuels juxtapose.

In their own event summary, the organization stressed the need for public and governmental groups to better collaborate on issues relating to health problems that result from human exposure to transportation and energy by-products.  Such simple things as living in proximity to a major road or utilizing selected chemical additives in fossil fuels (to either extend the strength of the product or to render it more 'environmentally friendly') have been found to have negative effects on human health.  How to collect data, track, analyze, and finally implement feasible solutions to these and other related issues were presented and debated over the two-day conference.

The costs of technical innovation, public policy, ecological stimuli, and financial incentives and disincentives were addressed in talks presented by representatives from academia, the EPA and DOE, and even industry titans like Exxon Mobil.  All the groups had many shared goals-to improve public health and access to better, safer means of transport methods.  Still, they all had their own distinct agendas on what had been and would now be their organizational priorities on these issues.

Further details and a link to the various speeches can be found at www.iom.edu/ehsrt or by calling (202) 334-2548.

Submitted By:
Stephanie Cooperstein, a business-environmentalist-scientific researcher-at-large has a background in international business and communications.  She is currently pursuing advanced studies in biotechnology methods and clinical research at the NIH and can be reached at coopersteins@mail.nih.gov.