Towards ethics guidelines for environmental epidemiologists

Over the past 5 years, several epidemiology organizations have published draft ethics guidelines for epidemiologists in general, without regard to sub-specialty. In this paper, we have reviewed these various guidelines. We have extracted the most salient of the principles from these guidelines and consolidated them into a unified set of ethics guidelines for environmental epidemiologists. Those guidelines found most relevant to environmental epidemiology are those from the Industrial Epidemiology Forum and those from the 1994 Ethics Workshop jointly organized by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) and the World Health Organization (WHO). From these, core values for those specializing in the field of environmental epidemiology are presented. It is to these core values that the guidelines relate. Additional areas of concern to environmental epidemiologists are noted that guidelines have yet to address. It is emphasized that guidelines require ongoing input from members of the profession and hence are expected to be revised periodically. A discussion of the role and importance of ethics guidelines to environmental epidemiologists within their individual practices, as they relate to one another as colleagues, and as they relate to society at large is included as a preface to the guidelines themselves.