Advances and perspectives in environmental health research in China

Highlights

● Environmental health research has surged in China over the past decade

● The scope extends beyond health effects of classic pollutants to include those of emerging pollutants and climate change

● Future research priorities and opportunities are proposed

Abstract

Environmental health research aims to identify environmental conditions suitable for the healthy living and reproduction of human beings. Through the interdisciplinary research bridging environmental sciences and health/medical sciences, the impacts of physical, chemical, and biological environmental factors on human health are investigated. This includes identifying environmental factors detrimental to human health, evaluating human exposure characteristics to environmental factors, clarifying causal relationships between environmental exposure and health effects, analyzing the underlying biochemical mechanisms, linking environmental factors to the onset and progression of diseases, establishing exposure-response relationships, and determining effect thresholds. Ultimately, the results of environmental health research can serve as a scientific basis for formulating environmental management strategies and guiding prevention and intervention measures at both the public and individual levels. This paper summarizes the recent advances and future perspectives of environmental health research in China, as reported by a group of Chinese scientists who recently attended a workshop in Hainan, China. While it is not intended to provide a comprehensive review of this expansive field, it offers a glimpse into the significant progress made in understanding the health impacts of environmental factors over the past decade. Looking ahead, it is imperative not only to sustain efforts in studying the health effects of traditional environmental pollution, but also to prioritize research on the health impacts of emerging pollutants and climate change.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Environmental pollution / Emerging pollutants / Climate change / Exposure / Mechanism

Dr. Tong ZHU is a Boya Chair Professor, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University. He graduated with BSc and MSc from Peking University, and Dr. rer. nat in Physical Chemistry from Wuppertal University, Germany. He was a postdoc at the Center for Atmospheric Chemistry of York University, Canada (1991–1992), a postdoctoral fellow and contract research scientist at the Soil and Biological Resources Research Centre of Agriculture Canada (1993–1999). Since 1999, he holds a professor position at Peking University, was the founding director of the Center for Environment and Health (2007–2022) and the dean of the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering (2012–2023). He is a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2021) and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (2022), a Fellow of American Geophysical Union (2019), and appointed as a Counsellor of the State Council of People’s Republic of China (2020). His research focuses on Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Health, and has published more than 480 papers in Science, PNAS, JAMA and other journals, with a H-index of 87 (Google scholar). He is the chair of the advisory group of the NSFC major program “Fundamental researches on the formation and response mechanism of air pollution complex in China ”, and the chair of Future Earth-Monsoon Asia Integrated Research for Sustainable Development (FE-MAIRS)

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Environment and Health Branch of Chinese Society for Sustainability for organizing and Hainan University for hosting the workshop. We thank all participants of the workshop for stimulating discussion. This work is partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2022YFC3702600).

Conflict of Interests

Tong Zhu is an advisory board member of Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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