| Ethical Issues in Environmental Health Research Richard R. Sharp Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA Abstract
Environmental health research encompasses a wide range of investigational topics, study designs, and empirical methodologies. As that arm of public health research concerned with understanding the health effects of the many environments in which humans live and work, the field is intimately connected with social concerns about environmental quality and disparities of power and privilege that place differential burdens upon members of underserved communities. Environmental health researchers thus engage many ethical and social issues in the work they do. These issues relate to the choice of research topics to study, the methods employed to examine these topics, the communication of research findings to the public, and the involvement of scientific experts in the shaping of environmental policy and governmental regulation. These and other topics are reviewed in this article. These ethical, legal, and social issues are becoming increasingly more complex as new genetic and molecular techniques are used to study environmental toxicants and their potential influence on human and ecologic health. Key words: environmental health research, ethics, governmental regulation, justice, participatory research, public policy. Environ Health Perspect 111:1786-1788 (2003) . doi:10.1289/ehp.6778 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 6 October 2003] This article is part of the mini-monograph "Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues in Environmental Health Research." Address correspondence to R.R. Sharp, Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030 USA. Telephone: (713) 798-3500. Fax: (713) 798-5678. E-mail: rsharp@bcm.tmc.edu The author declares he has no conflict of interest. Received 2 October 2003 ; accepted 2 October 2003.
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