Hansell, A: Environment and Health Atlas for England and Wal

The Environment and Health Atlas for England and Wales is an authoritative collection of over 80 full colour maps showing geographic patterns of common environmental exposures and diseases of public health importance, along with interpretive text, which gives an analysis of mortality, cancer incidences and other health data in England and Wales.

Each chapter provides an overview of the evidence on potential health impacts of environmental agents, particularly how they might relate to the geographical variations in disease risk. The health maps show recent time trends within England and Wales and, where available, comparative maps of Europe and the world, and provides summary statistics for the data presented. This information is also discussed in the context of other risk factors.

The Environment and Health Atlas for England and Wales informs policy-makers and the public on the geographic patterns of disease and potential exposure to various pollutants, and assists in developing hypotheses and research into the reasons for variability in disease risk that may relate to environmental exposures. It is essential reading for public health professionals and academics from within the field of public health, epidemiology, health geography and statistics.

Dr Anna Hansell MB BChir MA MRCP MSc PhD FFPH is the Assistant Director of the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU). She is a fully accredited public health doctor who has been working in environmental epidemiology for the past 12 years. She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer with an Honorary consultant position with Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust.

As Assistant Director of the SAHSU, Dr Hansell has particular research expertise in investigating public health issues relating to environmental exposures; ranging from waste to environmental noise. Dr Hansell has a personal research interest in the environmental determinants of chronic respiratory disease. She has conducted research on projects looking at health effects of long-term air pollution exposure in studies both in the UK and worldwide. Dr Hansell is a member of the government scientific advisory Committee on Toxicity (COT) of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment providing specialist epidemiological input.

For 10 years Linda Beale BSc MSc PhD was Research Fellow in Health and GIS at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU), part of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College London. She also held the position of Scientific Coordinator at SAHSU and has led a number of international projects including EUROHEIS II. Dr Beale has published and presented widely to international audiences and is a member of several scientific journal Editorial Boards. She is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Public Health and is Analysis and Geoprocessing Product Specialist at Esri Inc., California since 2011. Her continued research interests focus on the development of methodologies for spatial analysis, modelling and programming bespoke Geographical Information Systems applications for the analysis of spatio-temporal phenomena, particularly to explore geographical variation in health outcome and environmental risk for epidemiological study.


Rebecca Ghosh is a research associate in Environmental Epidemiology at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU), part of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College London. Her academic background is in environmental science having gained a BSc in Environmental Science and Development Studies from the University of Sussex (2004) and a Masters in Public Health (with a focus on Environment and Health) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2007). She completed her PhD at the National Heart and Lung Institute investigating the occupational causes of adult onset asthma in a British cohort in 2012.

Her main research interests are in the health effects of environmental exposures and her current research involves includes work investigating hospital admissions for Carbon Monoxide poisoning, the health effects of incinerators and the long term effects of air pollution.

Léa Fortunato is a research fellow in Health Population in the Environment and Global Health Research Group, part of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College London. Her main research area is Bayesian statistics applied to environmental epidemiology, with an emphasis on hierarchical modelling, spatial and spatio-temporal modelling.

Daniela Fecht is a Research Associate at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU). Her main research area is environmental epidemiology with particular focus on environmental justice, urban environments and small scale exposure assessment. She obtained her first degree in biogeography from the Universitaet des Saarlandes in Germany and finished her PhD in environmental epidemiology at Imperial College in May 2011. As a member of the Environmental Exposure Group within the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Imperial College London, she is also working on the development and application of geographical approaches and methods for exposure assessment and environmental health analysis making use of advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods.

Dr Lars Järup MD, PhD, FFPH qualified as a doctor of Medicine, followed by a PhD in occupational exposure at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. He joined the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU), Department of Epidemiology and Public Health in 1998 as a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Assistant Director and became Emeritus Reader upon his retirement in 2009. As Assistant Director at SAHSU, he played a key role in directing the UK's response to environment and health issues, and in developing spatial epidemiology approaches such as the Rapid Inquiry Facility. Dr Jarup had a distinguished career, publishing over 100 papers and book chapters.

He is survived by his wife, son and daughter and is remembered with great fondness by his colleagues not only for his considerable expertise, his contributions to environmental epidemiology but also for the humanity that he exemplified. This Atlas is testament to his work.