Ethical issues in environmental health research.

Abstract

Environmental health research encompasses a wide range of investigational topics, study designs, and empirical methodologies. As that arm of public health research concerned with understanding the health effects of the many environments in which humans live and work, the field is intimately connected with social concerns about environmental quality and disparities of power and privilege that place differential burdens upon members of underserved communities. Environmental health researchers thus engage many ethical and social issues in the work they do. These issues relate to the choice of research topics to study, the methods employed to examine these topics, the communication of research findings to the public, and the involvement of scientific experts in the shaping of environmental policy and governmental regulation. These and other topics are reviewed in this article. These ethical, legal, and social issues are becoming increasingly more complex as new genetic and molecular techniques are used to study environmental toxicants and their potential influence on human and ecologic health.

The Importance of Ethics in Branding: Mediating Effects of Ethical Branding on Company Reputation and Brand Loyalty

“…Studying industrial buyers of electronic products (the focus of this study) is particularly important in that the increasing awareness of environmental issues has stimulated concern about the disposal of products containing hazardous waste and the associated deleterious effects on the quality of the environment (Nnorom & Osibanjo, 2008). These ethical issues affect every type of business, enterprise, organization, and person (Sharp, 2003), thus making our research into the ethical brand concept both timely and crucial.…”

Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research—Part I: Genetic and Prenatal Testing

“…These concerns have propelled research on genetic susceptibility and environmental conditions threatening the nation’s youth. Research approaches to confirmed, suspected, or as yet unidentified relationships between the environment and developmental disorders have included assessments of biologic mechanisms through which environmental toxicants affect children’s health, identification of populations that may be genetically susceptible to environmental diseases, and evaluation of interventions designed to mitigate harms associated with environmental hazards ( Sharp 2003 ).…”

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues: Our Children's Future

“…While an approach to decision-making is important, it should not be over looked that study design, selection of study population, and even what and where to study have ethical considerations (Sharp, 2003). The links between ethics and public health are being explored with the gowing recognition of the social and policy implications of this work (Callahan and Jennings, 2002;Kass, 2001).…”