Special Issue "Environmental Legislation and Public Health"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Wendy E. Wagner
The University of Texas School of Law, 727 East Dean Keeton Street, Austin, Texas 78705, USA; Case Western Reserve University School of Law, 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
Website: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/profile.php?id=wewagner
E-Mail:
Interests: the use of science in environmental and health policy; the role of special interests in producing or influencing research used for regulation; the expression of limitations and uncertainty in policy-relevant research; disclosures of conflicts of interest and data-sharing in applied research

Dear Colleagues,

Scientists continue to discover disturbing connections between environmental toxicants and public health impacts. Legislation, however, often lags far behind these scientific discoveries and too often takes an incomplete approach to the problems.

In this Special Issue, contributors are encouraged to identify environmental health problems insufficiently addressed by current international, national, and/or local legislation. Environmental health risks include air and water pollution, pesticides, indoor air hazards, land contamination, consumer products including food, and drinking water contamination.

Contributors are also encouraged to discuss some of the more significant impediments to developing effective environmental legislation for these and related risks. Some of the impediments could include:

• the difficulties in focusing public attention and legislators on uncertain risks that affect the diffuse public
• the absence of advocates for legislation that addresses environmental threats that primarily impact the poor
• corrupt or unaccountable legislators
• the role of special interests (i.e., lead, asbestos, tobacco) in undermining the rigor and reliability of the science used for policy
• difficulties associated with adequately accounting for uncertainty and dynamism in science in developing legal requirements
• insufficient support of public health research (i.e., on nanotechnology)

Finally, contributors are encouraged to offer suggestions for how some of these challenges to public health legislation might be overcome in the future.

Prof. Dr. Wendy E. Wagner
Guest Editor

Submission

• regulation
• science
• adaptive management
• conflicts of interest
• environmental justice
• uncertainty
• environmental risks
• public health

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Persistent Organic Pollutants (Pops) Status and Regulatory Aspects in Taiwan
Author: Wen-Tien Tsai
Affiliation: Graduate Institute of Bioresources, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung 912, Taiwan; E-Mail: wttsai@mail.npust.edu.tw
Abstract: Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are chemical substances that persist in the environment of being capable of long-range transport, bioaccumulate in human and animal tissue through the food chain, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment. The objectives of this paper were to review current status of POPs in Taiwan, including their main sources, commercial/industrial uses, and environmental distributions. From the information, it can be connected with the regulatory infrastructure, which has been established by the joint-venture of the central competent authorities (i.e., Environmental Protection Administration, Department of Health, Council of Agriculture, and Council of Labor Affairs). The significant progress is that the emission of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/ polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDDs/PCDFs), despite several obstacles in the way of eliminating such POPs, has notably declined in recent years. Therefore, this paper also presents the case study on the reduction of PCDDs/PCDFs in Taiwan.
Keywords: persistent organic pollutants (POPs); environmental distribution; regulatory control; dioxins