Including Health in Environmental Assessments of Major Transport Infrastructure Projects: A Documentary Analysis
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Date
2017-05-10
Authors
Riley, Emma
Harris, Patrick
Kent, Jennifer
Sainsbury, Peter
Lane, Anna Patricia
Baum, Fran
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kerman University of Medical Sciences
Rights
Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Rights Holder
Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s).
Abstract
Transport policy and practice impacts health. Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are regulated public policy mechanisms that can be used to consider the health impacts of major transport projects before they are approved. The way health is considered in these environmental assessments (EAs) is not well known. This research asked: How and to what extent was human health considered in EAs of four major transport projects in Australia.
Methods
We developed a comprehensive coding framework to analyse the Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) of four transport infrastructure projects: three road and one light rail. The coding framework was designed to capture how health was directly and indirectly included.
Results
We found that health was partially considered in all four EISs. In the three New South Wales (NSW) projects, but not the one South Australian project, this was influenced by the requirements issued to proponents by the government which directed the content of the EIS. Health was assessed using human health risk assessment (HHRA). We found this to be narrow in focus and revealed a need for a broader social determinants of health approach, using multiple methods. The road assessments emphasised air quality and noise risks, concluding these were minimal or predicted to improve. The South Australian project was the only road project not to include health data explicitly. The light rail EIS considered the health benefits of the project whereas the others focused on risk. Only one project considered mental health, although in less detail than air quality or noise.
Conclusion
Our findings suggest EIAs lag behind the known evidence linking transport infrastructure to health. If health is to be comprehensively included, a more complete model of health is required, as well as a shift away from health risk assessment as the main method used. This needs to be mandatory for all significant developments. We also found that considering health only at the EIA stage may be a significant limitation, and there is a need for health issues to be considered when earlier, fundamental decisions about the project are being made.
Description
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords
Health, Transport, Infrastructure, Environmental Assessment (EA), Content Analysis
Citation
Riley, E., Harris, P., Kent, J., Sainsbury, P., Lane, A. P. & Baum, F., (2018). Including Health in Environmental Assessments of Major Transport Infrastructure Projects: A Documentary Analysis. Int J Health Policy Manag, 7(2), 144–153