Our role in public health

We have a role in preventing harm to human health from pollution and waste.

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As an independent statutory authority under the Environment Protection Act 2017, our role is to prevent and reduce harm from pollution and waste. An important part of this is preventing harm to human health.

We're concerned with how human health is or may be affected by pollution and waste.

Environmental public health is the science and practice of preventing harm to human health from pollution and waste. It focuses on:

  • groups of people rather than individuals
  • activities that target populations.

Our role in environmental public health is to:

  • provide public health advice related to pollution and waste
  • respond to incidents involving pollution and waste that impact public health
  • develop, strengthen and enforce environmental standards and laws to protect public health
  • identify and assess health risks in the environment associated with development, activities, projects and programs
  • develop policies and programs with public health issues in mind
  • investigate public health risks from emerging contaminants and other hazards of pollution and waste
  • regulate pollution and waste to protect public health.

We're guided by the federal Environmental Health Standing Committee (enHealth). This provides national leadership on issues relating to human health caused by environmental hazards.

Public health advice

We provide advice about health concerns related to:

Contact us or call us on 1300 372 842 with any concerns about the impact of pollution and waste on human health. We’re here 24 hours.

Biological agents include bacteria, viruses, fungi, other microorganisms and their associated toxins.

If you're concerned about your health or the health of someone in your care, always contact a health professional first.

When to contact the Department of Health

We do not provide advice about infectious disease outbreaks or the impact of disease on human health. That's the role of the Department of Health.

Department of Health deals with health concerns about:

  • infectious (communicable) diseases
  • Legionella
  • drinking water
  • recreational water use
  • radiation
  • blood lead levels
  • pest control
  • food safety.

Contact the Department of Health with any concerns about the impact of diseases or illnesses on public health.

When to contact your local council

Under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, your local council can respond to nuisance concerns related to pollution and waste issues. Nuisance concerns do not necessarily affect human health or the environment.

Contact your local council about:

  • asbestos dumped or from a domestic source
  • dust from a domestic or commercial source
  • odour from a domestic or commercial source
  • noise from a domestic or commercial source
  • agricultural spray drift
  • sites where illegal drugs are made – clandestine laboratories
  • wood heater and fireplace smoke
  • domestic burning
  • how to take care of your health in the heat.

We support councils when needed.

Advice, alerts and updates

We provide alerts, reports, advice and updates for the community to help you make informed decisions about your health. This includes:

  • air monitoring forecasts and alerts
  • recreational water quality forecasts and advice
  • recreational fishing and hunting advice, when contamination has occurred
  • incident responses and updates
  • emergency response advice provided to Emergency Management Victoria.

Environmental health criteria

Environmental health criteria are developed from health-based guidelines. Examples of environmental health criteria are air, soil or water criteria.

We use national guidelines, where available, or international guidelines to develop environmental health criteria. They set out the level of a pollutant or chemical you can be exposed to regularly over your lifetime without significant risk to your health.

Some contaminants can affect health only above a particular level of exposure. This level is the safety threshold. We set environmental health criteria below the safety threshold.

Other contaminants do not have a clear safety threshold. This means your health can be affected at very low levels of exposure. For example, there's no safe level of exposure to cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens) and fine particles in the air (PM2.5). For these contaminants, we set environmental health criteria at levels where the risk to health is low.

Environmental health criteria include a safety margin. This means your health may not be affected by:

  • being exposed to a pollutant at a level just above the criteria
  • infrequent exposure at a level above the criteria.

For more information visit the Environmental Health Standing Committee (enHealth).

Health risks in the environment

When you're exposed to a pollutant, there may be a risk to your health.

The level of risk depends on many factors, such as:

  • how hazardous the pollutant is (different pollutants can have different hazards – for example, one could cause skin or eye irritation, while another could be toxic or poisonous)
  • the concentration of the pollutant in the environment (the higher the concentration, the higher the potential for exposure and risk to health)
  • how you are exposed to the pollutant – for example:
    • drinking or showering in contaminated water
    • gardening or playing in contaminated soil
  • how often and how long you're exposed for:
    • short-term exposure for minutes or hours can result in rapid effects, such as irritation, headaches, nausea, dizziness or coughing
    • long-term or frequent exposure can result in chronic diseases, such as cancer
  • the presence of other pollutants (multiple pollutants acting together may increase the hazard)
  • who was exposed, and whether they are particularly vulnerable to health risks from pollution – for example:
    • people over 65
    • children under 14
    • pregnant people
    • people with underlying health conditions.

Health risk assessments

We use health risk assessments to understand:

  • the potential impacts on human health of past, current and proposed polluting activities
  • the nature and size of past, current and future health risks.

The assessment can be a:

In a health risk assessment, we look at communities or populations as a whole. We do not usually:

  • compare chemical levels measured in individuals or groups of people to health outcomes
  • diagnose disease.

A health risk assessment should not replace consultation with a medical or health practitioner.

When we may need a health risk assessment

We may need a health risk assessment when:

  • we are considering whether to issue a permission or not
  • it's needed as part of our compliance and enforcement activities
  • an initial assessment shows that environmental health criteria (for water, soil, air) are exceeded
  • a proposal does not achieve the indicators and objectives identified in Environment Reference Standard Part 2 – Ambient Air
  • the emissions from a proposed activity are not eliminated or minimised
  • there are contaminants or pollutants that do not have a relevant Australian standard
  • current and robust scientific literature indicates a causal relationship between a proposed activity and a measurable health impact in the community
  • a proposal involves the release of multiple chemicals with the potential for significant cumulative health effects in the exposed community
  • independent expert advice sought by us highlights potential health effects
  • independent expert advice sought by us recommends that a HHRA be undertaken
  • we receive submissions identifying potential health impacts of a proposed activity that justify more consideration and assessment
  • a previous HHRA undertaken needs updating or review.

Health impact assessments

A health impact assessment (HIA) considers the positive and negative effects on health from a development, project, program or policy.

The steps in a HIA are:

  1. screen to make sure a HIA is needed
  2. define the scope of the HIA, identifying which health effects to consider and setting boundaries
  3. profile the current status of the population and environment (baseline assessment) to:
    • provide information on the health of a community at a population level
    • establish a basis for comparing the situation before and after the development, project, program or policy
  4. assess and compare the importance of impacts
  5. consider management options
  6. make recommendations, approve and implement conditions
  7. monitor conditions and health outcomes
  8. evaluate conditions and health outcomes.

Human health risk assessment

A human health risk assessment (HHRA) can estimate:

  • the likelihood and severity of health effects occurring from chemical exposures
  • whether management measures are needed.

HHRAs are often based on:

  • the most sensitive or vulnerable people in the community
  • the most conservative exposure scenarios.

For example, a risk assessment of contaminated soil at residential housing will consider young children who might:

  • spend a long time playing in the soil
  • eat food grown at the property.

The estimated risk of a pollutant identified through the HHRA is conservative to protect public health. The safety factors applied to a pollutant take into account how different people might respond to it.

The aim of a HHRA is to identify if the risk identified is acceptable or not. A risk can be considered either:

  • negligible
  • acceptable
  • unacceptable.

The level of acceptable risk depends on:

  • the type of chemical – for example, whether it causes cancer
  • the regulatory setting
  • societal values.

We use the guidance on acceptable risk provided by the Environmental Health Standing Committee (enHealth).

‘Acceptable’ risks still need to be managed and reduced as far as reasonably practicable. You cannot pollute up to the level of acceptable risk.

The risk assessment helps us understand which exposure pathways are the most important to manage. For example, some chemicals might be taken up into food more easily than others. We use this information to tailor our advice to the situation. For example, we used a HHRA to tailor advice for managing arsenic in historical mine waste.

Microbial risk assessment

Microorganisms – bacteria, viruses and parasites – are found everywhere. They're in our environments and some are inside our bodies. Most are harmless and beneficial for our health. The ones that cause disease are called pathogens.

A microbial risk assessment identifies the risk to human health associated with pathogens.

Microbial risk assessments need specialised expertise to conduct. They can be:

  • semi-quantitative and simple
  • quantitative and based on available literature
  • quantitative and based on monitoring results (this takes significant resources).

For an activity that releases pathogens, a detailed quantitative microbial risk assessment can only be conducted if dose-response models exist for that pathogen. This means if the link between the dose and the effect on health is understood.

Instead of using pathogens themselves, microbial risk assessments rely on pathogen surrogates, which are likely to behave like some specific types of pathogens. These are microorganisms for which dose-response models exist.

Considerations when undertaking a microbial risk assessment include:

  • the type of pathogen – for example, a large number of bacterial pathogens may lead to an infection, while only one virus may be enough
  • the role a person's immune system plays – the same dose of a pathogen can result in a range of health outcomes, from no symptoms to death, depending on the characteristics of the person and the method of exposure
  • the pathogen strain – one strain of the same species may be harmless, while another strain may cause severe illness; some viruses may evolve quickly to become pathogenic to humans
  • whether the pathogen can be transmitted between people (secondary transmission)
  • how good our detection methods are at detecting the pathogens – some methods are not always sensitive enough.

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