Encyclopedia of Environmental Health

This encyclopedia constitutes a mammoth undertaking; the volumes, scholarship, and subject matter are all large. While Nriagu (environmental health sciences, Univ. of Michigan; editor, Science of the Total Environment) does not clearly define environmental health, it's fair to say that it encompasses many academic and applied disciplines and affects public policy and practice; its findings are often disputed. Nriagu and associate editors Sam Kacew, Toshihiro Kawamoto, Jonathan Patz, and Denise Rennie, together with 25 section editors, gathered 700 international contributors to write 450 multi-authored, alphabetically arranged critical reviews. Sample article titles include "Extreme Temperatures and Mortality," "Kuwait Before and After the Gulf War," "Arsenic Occurrence in Groundwater," "Bioaerosols in Apartment Buildings," "Pesticides and Thyroid Hormones," "Gender and Disasters," and "Cumulative Environmental Risk." Articles are included because they make "critical assessments of advancement in research frontiers," especially highlighting "new scientific paradigms to solve problems." Most articles are about 5000 words in length, and they provide definitions of abbreviations, illustrations, and excellent bibliographies that include websites. BOTTOM LINE This is an in-depth scholarly resource for graduate students, practitioners, and undergraduates in the policy sciences and sciences. Potential competitors such as Elsevier's International Encyclopedia of Public Health (2008) approach environmental health differently, and similar-sounding titles from other publishers cover the subject in a simpler and less comprehensive way.—Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. Lib., CUNY