Environmental factors should be linked to health care

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Subject:  Environmental factors should be linked to health care
 Date:     Tue, 16 Apr 2002 17:44:07 -0400
From:      Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
          Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation 

cc:    Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov

Tue, 16 Apr 2002 9:30:28 - CBC New Online

Environmental factors should be linked to health care: CMA Journal

  HALIFAX - The Canadian Medical Association Journal is launching a campaign to help doctors link the effects of the environment with the health of their patients, a connection some say is being overlooked.

The Nova Scotia Environmental Health Centre's Dr. Jonathan Fox says he sees many patients who report that their family doctors are confused by their collection of symptoms.

"An individual may have gastrointestinal symptoms which they may have been referred to a gastroenterologist to assess at the same time as they're having muscle pain and they're seeing a rheumatologist and it's not connected together, often," said Fox.

He estimates 15 to 20 per cent of the population may show symptoms that are linked to exposure to environmental toxins such as pesticides, lead or any of the 70,000 industrial chemicals used in Canada .

Now, in this week's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, a Toronto-based doctor calls for routine environmental exposure histories on new patients, or those with puzzling symptoms.

Dr. Lynn Marshall works with the environmental health centre at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto . She says doctors should ask patients about particular exposures in their lives and the industry in which they work.

And she says it could be accomplished using a simple questionnaire to show changes or trends in a patient that could signal toxic exposure.  From there, says Marshall , better treatment options could be offered.

Dr. Erica Weir of Hamilton helped co-ordinate the series of articles in the CMA Journal which discuss symptoms of lead poisoning, pesticide exposure and toxins in food. She hopes more doctors will take notice. "What we're hoping to do is to give physicians a practical strategy to deal quickly and efficiently with some of these presentations in the office."

A group of Nova Scotia doctors will soon get an opportunity to put the idea into practice.

The Nova Scotia Allergy and Environmental Health Association (NSAEHA) treatment committee has set up a scholarship to send five doctors in the province to the United States for courses on the signs and symptoms of environmental contaminants.

Written by CBC News Online staff   http://cbc.ca/stories/2002/04/16/enviro_health020416

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