Reviews of Environmental Health, 2004

broadening realization of the interconnectivity of well-being among species and ecosystems must bring new perspective to environmental health if we are to deal successfully with the dynamics of global change and human activity. Individuals might have interest and expertise in particular areas, but understanding the actions we must pro-actively take to enhance human and environmental health requires us to integrate many fields into articulated direction. EHP is committed to facilitating interdisciplinary communication from the most basic biological mechanism to public policy issues in the interest of health. Realistically an individual is challenged by the prospect of seeing the broad patterns that might come from integrating interdisciplinary information. Language, hypotheses, methods, and data interpretation vary greatly across fields. The rapid evolution of new technologies in all disciplines produces even more daunting challenges to environmental scientists , educators, and policymakers. Yet this integration is profoundly important to the individual disciplines because larger views can produce more relevant questions and direction within each field of study. The scientific complexity of environmental health in this time can produce confusion, or as we would hope, excitement and enthusiasm about discovery and our capacity to affect change in a positive direction. There are many important decisions and debates that must be met in the near future by the environmental health community. These involve global and local environments, exposure of humans and wildlife to new and old pollutants, children's health, environmental medicine, conservation biology, and emerging technologies. The objective of the EHP Annual Review issue is to provide the latest information on particular topics in a way that is useful both to a very broad readership and to the specialists. As the Annual Review issue continues to evolve, EHP would like to engage the environmental health communities to consider, suggest, and submit for consideration reviews that summarize new developments in environmentally relevant areas and provide balanced background and perspective. The review by Theo Colborn (2004) in this issue explores the role of environmental contaminants in disrupting thyroid signaling and its impact on the developing brain. The health issues associated with thyroid-mediated developmental disruption transcend humans and wildlife. Developmental pathways are conserved across diverse phylo-genies. It is possible that classes of environmental contaminants capable of altering development and behavior in species such as amphibians may also contribute to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and behavioral problems for humans in developed countries. Kamel and Hoppin (2004) continue to explore the …