User:Salla
Homework 1.
1. What is the main purpose of environmental health assessment?
To improve deliberate plans of actions that guide decisions aiming for desired outcomes using knowledge provided by environmental helath research and considering how different decisions and actions influence the environmental-health relationship.
6. What is benefit-risk assessment?
A science-based process where the benefits and risks for humans following exposure (or lack of exposure) are estimated qualitatively or quantitavely. It includes also the potential to integrate the estimates in to comparable measures.
9. What are the dimensions of openness?
There are five dimensions of openness:
1. Scope of participation (who are allowed to participate in the process) 2. Access to information (what information is made available to participants) 3. Timing of openness (when participants are invited or allowed to participate) 4. Scope of contribution (which acpects of the issue participants are invited or allowed to contribute to) 5. Impact of contribution (what extend are participant contibutions allowed to have influence on the outcomes)
Homework 3.
Scope
- Defines the purpose of the assessment: why is it done?
Talvivaara mine is producing metal emissions to the lakes nearby and these metals can affect to the feasibility of lake water as domestic water.
Question
- A research question that the assessment attempts to answer.
Does the amount of metals in lake water restrict its use as domestic water.
Intended use and users
- List of users that are supposed to need the assessment. Also, how do we expect them to use the information?
- Local residents: can they use the water? - Environmental authorities, for example ELY center: When necessary, ELY centre can give metal emission restrictions to Talvivaara mine. - Talvivaara mine: how the metal emissions could be reduced. - SYKE: monitoring of lakes
Participants
- Who is needed to participate to make the assessment a well-balanced and well-informed work? Also, if specific reasons exists: who is not allowed to participate and why?
- ELY centre - Local residents living nearby lakes - SYKE - Talvivaara mine is excluded because it may be partial
Scenarios
- Decisions and decision options considered. Also, if scenarios (defined here as delibarate deviations from the truth) are used, they are described here. For example this is a scenario: "Let's assume that the whole population is exposed as much as the maximally exposed individual, because we want to see if even the worst-case scenario causes concern."
Let´s assume that the amoun of metals in the lake water is more than limiting value, because we want to see how much the worst-case scenario causes concern.
Analyses
- What statistical or other analyses are needed to be able to produce results that are useful for making conclusions about the question?
- water analyses: comparing results to the limit values - how much and how do people consume lake water as domestic water: exposure
Answer
Results
- What are the results of the analysis?
- What is the concentration of different metals in lake water?
Conclusion
- What is the conclusion about the question based on the results obtained?
Can the lake water be used as domestic water?
Rationale
Endpoints
- What are the stakeholders that we should consider?
- What are the endpoints that a stakeholder is interested in? How would the stakeholder summarise the endpoints to derive an overall preference ranking for outcomes of decision options? Think about this separately for each stakeholder.
- Local residents: can they use the lake water as domestic water? - ELY centre: does the lake water fullfill given limit values? - Talvivaara mine: Do they need to reduce metal emissions by technical solutions? - SYKE: what is the state of lake water?
Variables
- What are the issues that should be looked at to be able to understand the outcomes of the decision options?
- money vs. environmental issues: Do we want to get financial profit at the expense of environment? - how does it affect on people that use of lake water is banned if the metal concentrations are too high?
- Typically, with health impact assessments:
- What emissions and exposures should be considered?
- Typically, with health impact assessments:
- metal emissions
- What health endpoints should be considered?
- irritation of respiratory tract when using lake water in the sauna
- What exposure-response functions should be considered?
- what happens when people use lake water in sauna?
- What population subgroups should be considered?
- children - the old - people with some respiratory disease