JLE

Environnement, Risques & Santé

MENU

Information systems in environmental health Volume 1, issue 1, Mars - Avril 2002

Authors
Institut de veille sanitaire, 2, rue du Val-d'Osne, 94415 Saint-Maurice Cedex.

Objective: to provide a rational strategy (rather than an exhaustive catalogue) for searching for environmental health information. The interdisciplinary nature of this field requires that this strategy assess the value of the information and critically review its sources. Sources and producers of information: institutions - international, European, North American and national - are the primary producers of information in the field of public health; they sponsor research and prescribe the obligations with which manufacturers must comply in their processes and products. NGOs and associations, as countervailing-powers, also produce information. Analytic strategy: . Explore the scientific literature through bibliographic databases . Exploit the literature through access to the content of the information collected . Collect the information pre-digested in factual databases, mostly in chemistry and toxicology, keeping in mind that only 350,000 of the 35 million substances identified by a Chemical Abstracts Services number are mentioned at all in North American databases, and only 800 have been evaluated for carcinogenicity . Learn about the context, from information available on the internet sites of the producers of the information . Look critically at the information thus assembled, taking into account the limitations of the tools and such objective criteria as: who produced a given piece of information? what is its form? has it been updated or externally validated? Help may also be obtained from the assessment tools provided by OMNI in the UK, Santecom in Quebec or the CHU of Rouen in France. Conclusion: the chronic underutilization of scientific information in the field of environmental health justifies our proposal of a method to overcome the apparent confusion and overabundance of information sources in this domain.