More then five years have passed since the Fourth Environment and Health Ministerial Conference was held in Budapest. As a result of important Budapest efforts and subsequent results, World Health Organization (WHO) European region member states have focused on implementing conference recommendations as contained in both the Budapest Conference Declaration and Children's Environment and Health Action Plan for Europe.
Italian involvement with ongoing WHO efforts to tackle Europe's environment-related health problems is now greater than ever, and the city of Parma will host the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health on March 10-12.
Commitments made at the Budapest conference will be reconfirmed in Parma, and these include the four Regional Priority Goals:
The SEARCH project is an example of regional cooperation to implement Priority Goal No. 3 of the Children's Health and Environment Action Plan (CEHAPE), namely: 'Prevention and reduction of respiratory diseases of children due to out-door and indoor air pollution, by complex research in schools'.
The project, launched and financed by Italy's Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea (IMELS), and in collaboration with the Regional Environmental Center (REC) - based on bilateral cooperation between Italy and Hungary -aims to promote the improvement of indoor air quality in schools in order to reduce the risk of acute and chronic pathologies and the number of allergic attacks among sensitive individuals.
After a required amount of study and analysis, the SEARCH project aims to encourage develop and promote practical, realisable ways to improve air quality in schools, and to spread awareness and understanding of health risks posed by environmental factors to families, school staff and all stakeholders who, in different ways, look after the health of young pupils.
As part of this project, complex comparative research has taken place in schools from eight countries: Albania, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Serbia and Slovakia. And it is within the context of the Parma conference's 'Protecting Children's Health in a Changing Environment' forum that the results and implications of this research will be shared and discussed.
The international research team of the SEARCH project found that outdoor pollution, school air quality, standards of living and parental attitudes towards children's health issues are the greatest determining factors in incidence of respiratory diseases among children. The long-term goal of the project is to develop suggestions for preventive and legal measures, as well as for criteria to control indoor air quality - with special attention to various allergies.
SEARCH project research results, a conclusion and policy recommendations will be presented in Parma at the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Health and the Environment (see the SEARCH side-event programme below).
Project website:www.rec.org/SEARCH
SEARCH side-event programme
Indoor Air Quality Symposium
organised by
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) in collaboration with the Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea (IMELS and the Italian Ministry of Health (MoH)
Indoor Air Quality in Europe: Preventing and Reducing Respiratory Diseases
March 10, 2010, 9:00-10:30 a.m.
Parma, City Council Conference Centre
Air pollution is one of Europe's major environmental health concerns. Current European policy and future plans on air quality ensure that all citizens are to be effectively protected from risks to health from air pollution. In 2003, the European Commission adopted a new Strategy on Environment and Health with the overall aim to reduce diseases caused by environmental factors. In 2004, 52 Environmental and Health Ministers of the WHO European Region signed the Children's Health and Environment Action Plan, including the Priority Goal 3: 'Prevention and reduction of respiratory diseases of children due to out-door and indoor air pollution'.
The scope of the symposium that follows is to review current policies and policy options on indoor air quality in Europe, and to report on the implementation of successful projects.
Co-chairs: Marti Szigeti Bonifert, REC; Dimitris Kotzias, JRC; Dr Fabrizio Oleari, Director General Department for Health Prevention, MoH.
Opening: Dr Corrado Clini, IMELS Director General
JRC: EU Policy and IAQ
REC and IMELS: School Environment and Respirator Health of Children (SEARCH)
MoH Italy: IAQ projects
Short contribution: IAQ project in The Netherlands
General discussion
Concluding remarks