Key messages

• Burden of disease calculations are well-established for air pollution but remain underdeveloped for chemical exposure.
• Ongoing case studies on substances like lead, arsenic, pesticides, and PFAS ↗ are addressing this critical knowledge gap.
• These studies aim to develop policy indicators to assess health impacts and provide strategies to reduce them. 

Overview

Environmental burden of disease analyses how much disease is caused by environmental factors like chemical exposures, while health impact assessments estimate the health effects of policies or programs. Together, these analyses help identify priorities for preventive action for current chemical exposure in the EU ↗. Case studies on priority substances identified by the Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) will calculate health impacts, risks, and cost scenarios, depending on data availability and methodological improvements. Findings will support the creation of indicators for risk and health impact.  

Health impact assessments as well as social and external cost-benefit analyses help quantify the health impacts of chemical exposure across EU populations. These tools can prioritise actions to prevent or reduce exposure and estimate the environmental burden of disease and the avoided costs due to policies and regulations. 

Case studies will focus on key chemicals prioritised by PARC. Based on findings from related projects in PARC on data and methods, selected case studies will assess health impacts and risk or cost-benefit scenarios for certain chemical, chemical classes, mixtures ↗, adverse health effects, and affected populations, using both existing and newly generated data. The results will also contribute to a project dedicated to developing a set of risk and health impact indicators. 

This project is one of four interconnected initiatives focussed on assessing the health impacts of chemical exposure. 

Achievements & Results

In the first year, a framework was developed to prioritise chemical exposure case studies. This included creating criteria and scoring rules, which were applied to proposals from project partners to select the most relevant studies. Initial case studies were identified, and their design and implementation are now ongoing.

For the second year, the focus is on finalising the first set of studies and beginning their implementation. These studies aim to assess health impacts, including burden of disease and cost-benefit analyses. Plans are also underway to prioritise additional case studies for future years, targeting key health effects like endocrine disruption ↗, immunotoxicity ↗, and neurotoxicity ↗. Work will continue to improve methods and harmonise approaches across studies.