A Study on the Preliminary Plan for Environmental Health in Seoul, Korea

In the Republic of Korea, the Environmental Health Act was amended in January 2021, making it mandatory for each local government to establish a plan for environmental health. Accordingly, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) must establish the Local Plan for Environmental Health (LPEH) to protect citizens’ health from environmental hazards. The plan would support existing environmental health policies in Seoul to improve population health and achieve their goals. As a proof-of-concept to establish the LPEH, we developed a preliminary plan for environmental health in Seoul. We analyzed environmental health conditions of Seoul, identified driving conditions for execution of environmental health policies, set basic policy directions, and identified tasks needed to establish the preliminary plan. As a result, we established the vision and the goals of the preliminary plan. The vision is “a safe Seoul environment, healthy citizens”. The strategies are “active monitoring of environmental health issues”, “minimization of health damage and meticulous and systematic response”, and “building a foundation for environmental health”. To achieve the vision and the goals, we developed three strategies, eight tasks, and 25 sub-tasks. Under the preliminary plan we developed, we expect that SMG is able to protect citizens’ health from threats of environmental hazards; improve environmental health conditions, especially in susceptible populations such as infants; and promote environmental justice.