The Health Impact Assessment within Environmental Impact Assessment Studies

Sustainability and sustainable development play a central role in addressing strategies and policies at the national and international level. Both these concepts have been largely discussed and different approaches have been proposed over time to promote their practical implementation, including the preventive one. In this context, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been built and developed to prevent or mitigate the negative impacts of a variety of anthropogenic activities on several environmental factors, including human health. Among the activities undergoing EIA, the building and operation of various chemical industrial plants may represent relevant scenarios to assess their wider health implications from a preventive perspective. The evaluation of these impacts on human health has been recently approached following a formally identified procedure, namely the Health Impact Assessment (HIA). This chapter aims at providing an overview on HIA, with particular reference to its integration within the EIA procedures: the legislative framework is thus figured out and the main features of HIA are discussed to point out its strengths and weaknesses as a decision supporting tool during the assessment of the environmental impacts of projects.

Keywords: Environmental Impact, Hazard, Health, Precaution and Prevention Principles, Risk Assessment.