Austrian Working Group on Indoor Air: An Example for Multidisciplinary Partnership in Environmental Health
Background: Environmental health provides a cornerstone to public health through multidisciplinary research and practice. Its focus is on health impacts of chemical, physical, and biological agents. By integrating physiological, toxicological, psychological, social and aesthetic aspects, it aims at understanding the complex relationship between the environment and human beings. Environmental health sciences contribute to identifying strategies for disease prevention and health promotion on individual and population levels. However, it generally takes a long time from the first scientific evidence, to getting policy maker’s and regulator’s attention and then, establishing standards and enacting effective measures.
Methods: The Austrian Ministry of the Environment established a working group consisting of specialists from various fields including physicians, technicians, toxicologists, psychologists, chemists, epidemiologists, lawyers in order to develop indoor air quality guidelines. Members also come from universities, administration, companies, and consultants. The multidisciplinary working group proceeds by defining (harmonized) overall procedures for assessment and evaluation of indoor air quality. Based on toxicological considerations (No-Adverse-Effect-Level, safety factors) indoor air guideline levels for selected air pollutants are derived.
Discussion: Similar to those established by organizations like US-EPA, standard procedures for the evaluation and assessment of indoor air pollutants have been established. This procedure has guaranteed an immediate impact on the assessments that are filed by experts and authorities. Inclusion of the various disciplines is essential to achieve the necessary impact of these guidelines. The recommendations are considered as an informative reference book for experts in Austria.