Air quality indexes, for example, reflect ambient air but seldom monitor air at nose-level or, more important, indoors, where unventilated household smoke can be far more serious than automobile exhausts. Incorrectly interpreted, pollution data might emphasize transport, industry, and energy while neglecting housing, where people spend most of their time. Unclear sectoral responsibilities lead to incomplete solutions . Since responsibilities for environmental health are undefined, agencies end up making a series of perfunctory inputs rather than contributing to an overall guiding principle. For example, reducing automobile emissions does not address already-settled lead which can recirculate in dust for up to 30 years.
Sustainable development is confused with sustainable pollution abatement .
By focusing on pollution, diseases like TB cholera, dengue, and malaria, which are staging comebacks globally, are seldom factored into environmental reports. Both actions can spread habitats of mosquitoes and other disease-spreading vectors. Lessons just beginning Since the Bank's experience with environmental health has been limited, so have the lessons. Yet, the sectors that exert direct health impacts do not set their policies on health criteria. It brought together ministers from the three areas to examine factors outside the health care system.