Chemical Health Threats : Assessing and Alerting

This book examines the European guidelines for the risk assessment and management of serious international public health threats.

Chemical health threats can have impacts across national borders and so may be more effectively tackled by international cooperation than by individual governments acting alone. As such, in November 2013, the European Union published the EU Decision for Serious Cross Border Threats to Health establishing a number of mechanisms for a coordinated, Europe-wide response with regards to preparedness, risk assessment, risk management, risk communication and international cooperation. Comprising a series of chapters from leading international researchers, this book covers recent developments in the field which support the implementation of these European legal instruments. It begins by contextualising the need for data that surveillance of toxic threats can deliver, before going on to examine some of the tools that have been developed to facilitate toxicosurveillance in Europe as well as current toxicosurveillance networks outside the EU. In addition, this book covers the European Union regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), and the work of the Alerting System for Chemical Health Threats (ASHT) project to improve the risk assessment and management of chemical health threats in Europe. The volume provides a vital resource for researchers, educators, policy-makers and practitioners with an interest in key questions facing global hazardous substance control.