Database concerning environmental impacts of energy generation on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic

The features of a database concerning environmental impacts of energy generation systems on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic are introduced in this paper. These include: databank of the power producing industry (information on power economy which comprises the entire process of primary energy generation including conversion and use and data on the brown coal mining industry such as agriculture and forestry acreage, areas for water management); data on monitoring environmental impacts such as emissions (dust, SOx, NOx, fluorine, chlorine, ammonia); emissions (concentrations of harmful substances), and waste repositories (dumping sites); data on environmental radioactivity and radiation exposure such as radioactive contamination of the environment by artificial radionuclides, radiation exposure of the population and occupational radiation exposure; data on health impacts (infant mortality, life expectancy, cancer morbidity, chronic bronchitis, respiratory diseases) and information on diseases due to chemical or physical impacts, dusts, etc.; data on different types of accidents (at work, traffic accidents, during different activities). The paper concludes by highlighting the need of developing environment/health relevant data banks based on an internationally uniform methodology. Inter-disciplinary working groups should be established to examine further the structure between energy-environment-health. (author)