Environmental stressors contribute significantly to the global burden of disease and they are important health determinants also in Europe. The magnitude of public health impacts associated with exposure to different environmental factors varies by orders of magnitude.

Quantification of the impacts allows policy makers and evaluators to focus their efforts in an efficient way on those environmental factors that cause the greatest burden of disease. Disability adjusted life year (DALY) is a common metric for multitude of health impacts varying from premature mortality to less severe diseases like allergies. The current report demonstrates the use of DALYs to measure environmental burden of disease in Europe for nine factors that are relevant in developed countries. The methods were applied in six countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands), where 3-7% of the burden of disease was estimated to be associated with the evaluated nine stressors (benzene, dioxins, second hand smoke, formaldehyde, lead, transportation noise, ozone, particulate matter and radon). Particulate matter was leading the health impacts, followed by second hand smoke, transportation noise and radon.