--- name: brycewang-stanford/environment-international source: https://app.decimal.ai/s/brycewang-stanford-environment-international@1/SKILL.md source_sha256: 49a6338b742d --- # Environment International (environment-international) ## Journal positioning Environment International is the Elsevier journal for environmental science with a strong human-health and exposure emphasis — environmental exposures and contaminants, the exposome, environmental epidemiology, and human health-risk assessment across air, water, soil, food, and the built environment. Its defining expectation is **population-relevant exposure–health evidence**: a study that connects a measured or modeled environmental exposure to a human health outcome or risk with rigorous quantification. Compared with Environmental Health Perspectives, the scope is broader environmental-science-plus-health and method-forward; a purely environmental-monitoring paper with no health relevance, or a clinical study with no environmental exposure, is a weak fit. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current author guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live Environment International submission guidance. ## When to trigger - The author names Environment International and wants a fit/framing check for an environmental-exposure or environmental-health paper. - An exposure-assessment, contaminant, or exposome study must be re-framed toward its population-relevant health implication. - The author is deciding between Environment International and Environmental Health Perspectives, or between it and a pure environmental-science venue. - The author needs this journal's exposure–health evidence bar and desk-reject heuristics. ## Scope & topic fit - Human exposure assessment: external and internal (biomonitoring) exposure to chemical, physical, and biological agents across multiple environmental media. - Exposome and mixtures: high-dimensional exposure characterization and combined-exposure effects on health. - Environmental epidemiology linking exposures to health outcomes across the life course, including susceptible populations. - Emerging and legacy contaminants (e.g., PFAS, metals, air pollutants, EDCs) with measured exposure and a health or risk endpoint. - Health-risk assessment, exposure modeling, and method development for exposure science when the population-health relevance is explicit. - Mechanistic toxicology or in-vitro/animal work when clearly anchored to human exposure and risk. ## Method & evidence bar - The contribution must connect a **defensible exposure measure to a human health outcome or risk**, not report exposure or environmental concentrations alone. - Epidemiological designs need appropriate confounding control, exposure-misclassification handling, sensitivity analyses, and attention to bias and causal interpretation. - Exposure assessment needs validated analytical methods, QA/QC, detection-limit handling, and representativeness of the sampled population. - Mixtures/exposome analyses must use suitable high-dimensional methods and guard against false discovery and overfitting. - Modeling and risk assessment must state assumptions, parameter sources, and uncertainty; dose-response and extrapolation choices must be justified. - Reporting should follow recognized epidemiology/exposure guidelines and report effect sizes with uncertainty, not just significance. ## Structure & house style - Standard research-article format; the journal also publishes reviews and shorter formats — re-check current article types and length on the live guide. - The introduction must establish the exposure–health question and population relevance, not only the environmental-chemistry novelty. - Figures and tables should be quantitative and health-anchored (exposure–response curves, effect estimates with confidence intervals, exposure distributions), with full models in SI. - Methods, data, and code should support reproducibility; follow the journal's data-availability expectations and human-subjects/ethics reporting. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the Elsevier anchors, then cite the current Environment International page you checked. - Search the live site for "Environment International guide for authors" and follow the current Elsevier version. - Re-check article types, length, abstract, and graphical-abstract/highlights requirements. - Confirm reporting-guideline expectations (e.g., epidemiology checklists) and ethics/consent statements for human data. - Re-check data-availability, code, and any biomonitoring/cohort data-sharing expectations. - Re-check competing-interests, funding, author-contribution, and AI-use disclosure, and open-access terms. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] A defensible exposure measure is linked to a human health outcome or quantified risk. - [ ] Epidemiological confounding, exposure misclassification, and bias are addressed with sensitivity analyses. - [ ] Exposure analytics have validated methods, QA/QC, and a representative sample. - [ ] Mixture/exposome analyses control false discovery and overfitting. - [ ] Effect sizes are reported with uncertainty and a justified causal interpretation. - [ ] Ethics, reporting guidelines, and data-availability requirements are met. ## Common desk-reject triggers - Environmental monitoring or concentration data with no human-health or risk endpoint. - A clinical/health study with no characterized environmental exposure. - Epidemiology with uncontrolled confounding or unaddressed exposure misclassification. - Exposome/mixture screening with no correction for multiplicity or no validation. - Risk-assessment or modeling with opaque assumptions and no uncertainty analysis. - Scope mismatch: a pure ecotoxicology or pure environmental-chemistry paper without the human-health link. ## Re-routing decision - Public-health/policy framing and NIEHS-style remit dominant → `environmental-health-perspectives`. - Contaminant sources/fate/ecological impact rather than human health → `environmental-pollution`. - Dietary-contaminant chemistry is the contribution → `food-chemistry`. - Broad sustainability/solutions framing → `nature-sustainability`. - Major population-health clinical-epidemiology scope → `the-lancet` or a dedicated epidemiology journal. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Environment International [Topic tags] <2–3 closest exposure/health topics> [Exposure–health link] [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```