The insertion of the environmental health surveillance in the unified health system

The integration of environmental monitoring activities in the Unified Health System (SUS) shows some characteristics that differentiate it from the practice of epidemiological surveillance. This occurs mainly because much data on exposure to environmental factors is obtained outside the health sector and the adoption of actions that seek to control and/or prevent requires, in most cases, an intra andintersectoral understanding and articulation, since the health sector is not able, by itself, to provide answers to environmental health issues.In recent years, there has been an increasingly consolidation of the field of environmental health, which includes the area of public health, accustomed to scientific knowledge, to the formulation of public policies and the corresponding interventions (actions) related to the interaction between human health and both natural and anthropic environmental factors, which determine, modulate and influence such interaction, in order to improve the quality of human life from the point of view of sustainability(1).As agreed at the Ist Seminar of the National Environmental Health, held in October 2005 and consolidated in the first National Conference on Environmental Health, held in December 2009, it is understood as an area of intersectoral and interdisciplinarypractice focused on the outcomes, in human health, of ecogeossocialrelations between man and environment(1).Accordingly, the Ministry of Health has been implementing, throughout the country, a Surveillance System in Environmental Health (SINVISA), seeking the improvement of this “model” of activities, establishing expertise into the three levels of government, aiming to consolidate the practice of Environmental Health within the SUS.Normative Instruction No. 1, March 7, 2005, creates SINVISA, establishes the area of action, the scope of the three levels of management within SUS and defines the Environmental Health Surveillance as a set of actions and services provided byagencies and both public and private entities that aim to knowledge and detection or prevention of any change in the environmental determinants and conditioning factors that interfere with human health in order to recommend and adopt measures for prevention and control of risk factors related to diseases and other healthproblems(2).Due to the complexity of the situation, some fields have been identified as fields of action of the Environmental Health Surveillance: monitoring of water quality for human con