Reviews in environmental health, 2000.

As we move into the next millennium, the importance of environmental health issues escalates. While humans always had an impact on their environment, the destructive impact began to mount with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and continued throughout the 19th century. As the 20th century comes to a close, soaring world population, overconsumption, and waste production have led to an enormous number of anthropogenic toxicants causing widespread environmental pollution of land, water, and air. The issue of environmental degradation and its effects on human health was slow to reach the world's conscience. A major step in addressing the degradation occurred in 1972 when the United Nations General Assembly organized the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. This led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which attempts to solve many problems, including cleaning up the Mediterranean; protecting water resources; combating deforestation, desertification, and drought; and phasing out the production of ozone-depleting chemicals. Numerous people helped bring about this general awareness of environmental issues, for example, Rachel Carson, who is perhaps the best known of the early environmental prophets. Another person who deserves recognition is the late Dr. David P. Rall, second director of NIEHS (1971-1990) and the founder of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. His powerful voice helped to educate the world and to muster the needed governmental forces critical for addressing environmental health issues. The growing awareness of the problem culminated in the convening of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. This meeting was attended by nearly 30,000 people from around the world, including more than a hundred world leaders and representatives from 167 countries. The goal of the summit was to address troubling symptoms of environmental decline. One important accomplishment of the Summit was the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Five years later in Kyoto, Japan, an agreement (Kyoto Protocol) was reached that limits greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries. Although there is disappointment with the progress to protect the environment, there is a growing awareness of the impact that a polluted environment can have on our health and well-being. But how much is truly understood by the public? Surveys suggest that there is much work ahead, as the American public consistently receives failing grades in basic environmental knowledge. Green education continues to be an important need. This year Environmental Health Perspectives continues its tradition of publishing a supplement containing review papers spanning a wide range of topics in environmental health. The objectives of these reviews are to summarize new developments in environmentally relevant areas, to provide a perspective for these new findings, and to provide sufficient background information for those not familiar with the specific topic. Selected topics for this edition are environmental disease mechanisms, toxicology, nonionizing radiation, global ecologic issues, and public health issues.