Environmental Pollution and Human Health

Illés Dési and László Nagymajtényi

Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and WHO Collaborating Center for Chemical Safety, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

Corresponding author: Prof. Illés Dési
    Department of Public Health
    University of Szeged
    Dóm tér 10.
    H-6720 Szeged, Hungary
    Telephone: (+36) 62 545 19
    Fax number: (36) 62 545 120
    E-mail: des@puhe.szote.u-szeged.hu

CEJOEM 2000, Vol.6. No.2-3.:134-137

Key words:
Environment, human health, Eastern Europe, arsenic, pathological findings drinking water, and geochemical factors

Abstract:
The serious environmental situation of Central and Eastern Europe is treated in the paper with special emphasis on that of the Danube-Kris-Mures-Tisa Euroregion. In Hungary water pollution (surface and subsurface) is one of the major problems. A special water pollution issue arose when high arsenic content was found in drinking waters of four counties in Southeast Hungary. The same was detected on the other side of the border in Romania and Yugoslavia. The presence of arsenic is due to geological factors and not to human pollution, but the results were just as severe. Epidemiological and pathological clinical findings in children and adults are further described with a suggestion for investigation of the early functional impairment of the nervous and immune systems or the chromosomes (so-called biomarkers) in order to detect the consequences of low-level pollution. The present Hungarian As levels in drinking water are all below 50 µg/L (the former WHO recommendation). The present WHO recommendation of 10 µg/L cannot as yet be fulfilled.

Received: 31 July 2000
Accepted: 06 September 2000

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