1. INTRODUCTION

The Environmental Health Monitoring System (hereafter Monitoring System) has been operated as set out by Resolution No. 369/1991 of the Government of the Czech Republic (CZ). It is relied upon in the new Act No. 258/2000 on public health protection and is one of the priorities of the National Environmental Health Action Plan in the Czech Republic approved in Government resolution No. 810/1998. The particular subsystems have been run routinely since 1994, so the year 2000 is the seventh year of the standard monitoring activities and data processing. The Monitoring System is the open system and has developed continuously in terms both of the monitored pollutants range and methods of data processing and presentation.

In the course of 1998, a detailed analysis of all monitoring activities was performed and accordingly, an amendment to the monitoring subsystem projects was gradually elaborated. The amendment was approved by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic and by the Expert Advisory Committee at the close of 1998, and came into force in 1999. The objectives of this amendment have been made to utilize the experience acquired in the preceding years of monitoring, to react to technical developments in the individual fields of interest, and to optimise the activities of the monitoring network.

Since 2000 the following two subsystems have been progressively included in the Monitoring System: monitoring of the health effects and risks related to occupational environment and to municipal soil contamination. The objectives of monitoring the workers’ health status in relation to the working conditions are to obtain background data for formulating occupational health protection policy, to establish priorities for the occupational medical care, research, surveillance activities and legislative measures and to suggest preventive measures to be taken at all levels to minimize occupational risks. The objective of municipal soil contamination monitoring is to assess the health risk from exposure to toxic and microbiological agents from soil and soil dust in the cities.

The Summary Report 2000 is the seventh one in the continuous series of data on environmental health monitoring. Its objective is to continue in the study of time series of the monitored parameters and their evaluation. Trends in quality development of the environmental components and population health status will be determined for the given time intervals and their assessment is prepared for the following monitoring period.

The Summary Report of the Monitoring System recapitulates the results obtained within the individual subsystems in 2000 and compares them with those of the previous years. Aggregated results are presented as background information for the national authorities making decisions on environmental health, for the Public Health Service, co-operating departments and institutions and for the interested public. The results are provided in detail in the Special Reports of the individual subsystems, as in previous years. In addition, since 1997, the Summary Report has been available through the Internet at the address of the National Institute of Public Health (www.szu.cz/chzpa/sumrep.htm) and since last year, also on a CD-ROM including Special Reports and other information on the Monitoring System.

Note: The terms and abbreviations used in the text, figures and tables are listed in Chapter 13.


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