The Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health (SEGH) in collaboration with The State Geological Institute of Dionýz Štúr, Bratislava and the project team of GEOHEALTH organized the 31st International Conference of the Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health in Bratislava, June 22-26 2015.
The conference was organized under the auspices of Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic and supported by financial instrument Life +.
Bratislava welcomed over 100 delegates from over 25 countries to SEGH 2015.
The main conference topic was the link between environment and health.
More than 80 contributions presented at SEGH 2015 as oral presentations or posters were specialized across the three main thematic groups:
1. Effects of contamination of the geological environment on human health
2. Effect of the deficit or excess of chemical elements in the geological environment on human health
3. Linking of geochemical and medical data.
The first two topics have been receiving global attention for decades. The third thematic group is relatively new. Finding the influences of the geological environment on human health is a challenging task and linking geochemical and medical data could be an effective way forward.
The topic 1 has attracted the majority of speakers who presented their studies dealing with aspects of contamination of geological environment including waters, soils, stream sediments, air, food chain, and urban environment. This topic had a scientific background presented by our keynote lectures: Stanislav Rapant (opening lecture), Andrew Hursthouse (urban environment), Andy Cundy (contaminated sites and wastes) and Taicheng An (risk assessment and analytical procedures). Special afternoon session by Chinese delegates brought innovative views on the analytical methods and procedures used for risk assessment.
The topics 2 and 3 were opened by 3 keynote speakers. František Kožíšek and Alex Stewart brought us an overview of current knowledge within the topic “Deficit and/or excess of chemicals in geological environment and their health effects on humans”. Mark Cave approached us the issue by linking geochemical and health data through use of health deprivation indices.
This year a student prize was given to Daniela Zuzolo from Italy for her poster
“Assessment of th environmental conditions of the Calore river basin (South Italy): a stream sediment approach”. Congratulations.
The scientific programme of SEGH 2015 was built up from highly diversified keynote, plenary and poster lectures from various fields of research on relationship between environment and health and brought us a various views on the issue of the impact of contaminated geological environment on human health.
All conference details, photos and book of abstracts are available downloading on this conference website in respective sessions.
During SEGH 2015 board a transfer of the post of SEGH President happened. We would like to thank to ex-president Andrew Hursthouse for his leading of SEGH as well as we wish a lot of success to Chaosheng Zhang as new SEGH president.
The scientific programme was accompanied by social events including sightseeing tour by historical city train through the main historical sights of Bratislava city and conference dinner with local music that took place in very pleasant restaurant in Holiday Inn Bratislava. All delegates participated on these events have enjoyed these social events.
The fieldtrip took place during last conference day, Friday 26 June 2015. The participants explored the anthropogenically contaminated site – waste disposal from local aluminum factory whith explanation of featured environmental problems and remediation.
The second part of the excursion was the visit of open-air mining museum in Banská Štiavnica – the most significant historical mining town in the Slovak Republic, innscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list. Surface as well as undeground exhibition offered to delegates an overview of mediavel historical times of mining of silver and gold in this region.
Finally, we would like to thank all delegates coming from over the 20 countries for their participation in SEGH 2015 and their support to us as organizers. We hope you have enjyoed Bratislava and you are warmly welcome to back to our country in the future.
We hope we can meet all in Brussels in 2016 where the SEGH 2016 takes place. See www.segh.net for details.
by Katarína Fajčíková and Stanislav Rapant
(SEGH 2015 organizers)
