Background: Environmental health effects vary considerably with regard to their severity, type of disease, and duration. Integrated measures of population health, such as environmental burden of disease (EBD), are useful for setting priorities in environmental health policies and research. This review is a summary of the full Environmental Burden of Disease in European countries (EBoDE) project report.Objectives: The EBoDE project was set up to provide assessments for nine environmental risk factors relevant in selected European countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands).Methods: Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were estimated for benzene, dioxins, secondhand smoke, formaldehyde, lead, traffic noise, ozone, particulate matter (PM2.5), and radon, using primarily World Health Organization data on burden of disease, (inter)national exposure data, and epidemiological or toxicological risk estimates. Results are presented here without discounting or age-weighting.Results: About 3–7% of the annual burden of disease in the participating countries is associated with the included environmental risk factors. Airborne particulate matter (diameter ≤ 2.5 μm; PM2.5) is the leading risk factor associated with 6,000–10,000 DALYs/year and 1 million people. Secondhand smoke, traffic noise (including road, rail, and air traffic noise), and radon had overlapping estimate ranges (600–1,200 DALYs/million people). Some of the EBD estimates, especially for dioxins and formaldehyde, contain substantial uncertainties that could be only partly quantified. However, overall ranking of the estimates seems relatively robust.Conclusions: With current methods and data, environmental burden of disease estimates support meaningful policy evaluation and resource allocation, including identification of susceptible groups and targets for efficient exposure reduction. International exposure monitoring standards would enhance data quality and improve comparability.Citation: Hänninen O, Knol AB, Jantunen M, Lim TA, Conrad A, Rappolder M, Carrer P, Fanetti AC, Kim R, Buekers J, Torfs R, Iavarone I, Classen T, Hornberg C, Mekel OC, EBoDE Working Group. 2014. Environmental burden of disease in Europe: assessing nine risk factors in six countries. Environ Health Perspect 122:439–446; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1206154

The effects of soil properties and zinc (Zn) availability on the toxicity of Zn to soil microbial processes are poorly understood. Three soil microbial processes--potential nitrification rate (PNR), substrate (glucose)-induced respiration (SIR), and a maize residue respiration (MRR)--were measured in 15 European topsoils (pH 3.0-7.5; total Zn 7-191 mg/kg) that were freshly spiked with ZnCl2. The Zn toxicity thresholds of 20 to 50% effective concentrations (EC20s and EC50s) based on total concentrations of Zn in soil varied between 5- and 26-fold among soils, depending on the assay. The Zn toxicity thresholds based on Zn concentrations in soil solution varied at least 10-fold more than corresponding total metal thresholds. Soil pH had no significant effect on soil total Zn toxicity thresholds, whereas significant positive correlations were found between these thresholds and background Zn for the PNR and SIR test (r = 0.74 and 0.71, respectively; log-log correlations). No such trend was found for the MRR test. Soil solution-based thresholds showed highly significant negative correlations with soil pH for all assays that might be explained by competition of H+ for binding sites, as demonstrated for aquatic species. The microbial assays were also applied to soils collected under galvanized pylons (three sites) where concentrations of total Zn were up to 2,100 to 3,700 mg Zn/kg. Correlations between concentrations of total Zn and microbial responses were insignificant at all sites even though spiking reference samples to equivalent concentrations reduced microbial activities up to more than 10-fold. Differences in response between spiked and field soils are partly but not completely attributed to the large differences in concentrations of Zn in soil solution. We conclude that soil pH has no significant effect on Zn toxicity to soil microbial processes in laboratory-spiked soils, and we suggest that community tolerance takes place at both background and elevated Zn concentrations in soil.

Summary The determination of radio‐labile metals in soil has gained renewed interest for predicting metal availability. There is little information on to what extent the fraction of labile metal is affected by the soil properties and the source of metal contamination. The radio‐labile content (E value) of Cd and Zn was measured in field‐collected soils with Cd and Zn originating from different sources. The E values were erratic and sometimes even exceeded total metal content when the concentration in the soil extract was less than 8 μg Zn l−1 or less than 3 μg Cd l−1. Addition of EDTA (0.1 mm) to the radio‐labelled soil suspension resulted in larger concentrations of Cd and Zn in solution and smaller E values for these soils. The E values were, however, unaffected by the presence of EDTA (0.1 mm) in soils with larger concentrations of Cd and Zn in solution. The %E values (E value relative to metal soluble in aqua regia) ranged from 9% to 92% (mean 61%) for Cd and from 3% to 72% (mean 33%) for Zn. No correlation between soil properties and %E was observed for Cd, and the %E of Zn was negatively correlated with soil pH (r = −0.65). There was a strong negative correlation between pH and %E in soils enriched with metals in soluble form (e.g. metal salts, corrosion of galvanized structures). In soils where Cd or Zn were added in a less soluble form, no such correlation was found, and %E values were generally less than in soils spiked with metal salts, suggesting that the source of the contamination controls mainly the labile fractions of Cd and Zn.

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