Health care industry is exhorted to lean toward green.(Practice Trends)

LA JOLLA, CALIF. -- The link between environmental toxins and cancer and other diseases is so suggestive that health care professionals must do all they can to diminish the risks to public health, Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor declared at a meeting on natural supplements in evidence-based practice sponsored by the Scripps Clinic.

Such an effort, he said, should be based on what Lancet editor Richard Horton termed "the precautionary principle." This notion holds that "we must act on facts and on the most accurate interpretation of them, using the best scientific information," Dr. Horton wrote (Lancet 1998; 352:251-2). "That does not mean we must sit back until we have 100% evidence about everything. Where the ... health of the people is at stake ... we should be prepared to take action to diminish those risks, even when the scientific knowledge is not conclusive."

"We should demand that this principle become part of public policy" in the treatment and prevention of environmental causes of disease, said Dr. Gaynor, of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York.

"I gave a lecture at the United Nations in 2003 on water pollution as it related to all the countries on earth and the fact that very soon, clean drinking water is going to become a scarce commodity," he said. "It's important that we become advocates for our own health."

While evidence on the adverse health effects of chemical exposure continues to mount, steps toward more environmentally friendly policies are under way at many health care organizations around the globe. For ...