EN
A system for the quantitative assessment of environmental hazards has been developed, based on the rules of the environmental toxicology. The system enables a uniform, comparative assessment of the hazards, such as industrial toxins, as well as of other hazards which occur in the vicinity of industrial plants. The system is based on a completely new approach to the assessment of environmental and health risks, which uses synthetic measures of enviromental and health hazards. Thereby, it is possible to rank hazardous areas and set priorities for corrective action. Environmental and health hazards index profiles make it possible to identify hazards dominating in a local area. The new-developed mathematical model for the relationship between the synthetic measure of population health in a given area and the negative indices of pollution-related environmental hazards may be used to forecast health status of the inhabitants of polluted urban areas. The method has been used to assess and rank the areas of environmental hazard in Poland, and it has proved to be fully feasible. It may be used as a valuable tool in the development of environmental and health policies by the government.