Environmental health research in Europe: bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Background: This article describes a bibliometric review of the environmental health research literature in Europe for a period of 10 years. The work, within the study SPHERE (Strengthening Public Health Research in Europe) aimed to provide an overview of the extent of published environmental health research in Europe and to assess recent output in this research field and future research direction.

Methods: Medline was used via the PubMed online service of the US National Library of Medicine. Only original, peer-reviewed research journal articles were retrieved, which were published from mid-1995 to mid-2005 and by authors from the 28 (then) countries in Europe of the European Economic Area plus Switzerland.

Results: In the PubMed database, 6329 references were located and were allocated to 11 pre-defined topic areas and 31 subtopic areas. The largest number of articles was in the topic area of work environment and health (2339) followed by environmental exposures (1314) and environmental illnesses (952) and these were the primary foci of 73% of the published articles. There were marked differences between countries in the number of published articles. Ten countries contributed 81% of all publications. It is apparent that economic factors have a major role for research outputs of countries in environmental health.

Conclusions: Major advances have been made during recent years in the understanding of associations between health and environment, and of biological, environmental and social mechanisms involved in this association. More emphasis should be placed on investigations of complex environmental health problems such as complex exposures to different pollutants at different levels and their combined health impact in different populations.