期刊名称:Environmental Health - a Global Access Science Source
印刷版ISSN:1476-069X
电子版ISSN:1476-069X
出版年度:2009
卷号:8
期号:1
页码:21
DOI:10.1186/1476-069X-8-21
语种:English
出版社:BioMed Central
摘要:Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) combine the number of people affected by disease or mortality in a population and the duration and severity of their condition into one number. The environmental burden of disease is the number of DALYs that can be attributed to environmental factors. Environmental burden of disease estimates enable policy makers to evaluate, compare and prioritize dissimilar environmental health problems or interventions. These estimates often have various uncertainties and assumptions which are not always made explicit. Besides statistical uncertainty in input data and parameters – which is commonly addressed – a variety of other types of uncertainties may substantially influence the results of the assessment. We have reviewed how different types of uncertainties affect environmental burden of disease assessments, and we give suggestions as to how researchers could address these uncertainties. We propose the use of an uncertainty typology to identify and characterize uncertainties. Finally, we argue that uncertainties need to be identified, assessed, reported and interpreted in order for assessment results to adequately support decision making.
关键词:Noise Exposure ; Environmental Burden ; Health Impact Assessment ; Uncertainty Source ; Disability Adjust Life