At present in many cities Russian where no regular ecological monitoring is carried out (typical for towns with the population of 50-100 thousands with no stationary monitoring posts of Hydrometerological Service of the RF), an actual task is to evaluate the level of pollution of the environmental components and its impact on the health of people.

To receive a comprehensive picture of the ecological situation in the city territories a method was elaborated by the Institute of Industrial Ecology, Ural Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPE Uro RAN) based on the common approach to the complex interdisciplinary research of the problems of the ecologically unfavourable territories comprising three consequent research blocks.

On the first stage a complex study of environmental pollutants of the city territories was performed basing on a full-scale field investigation with selection and chemical analysis of the samples of the environments.

Our findings and the data of desk researches show that the main ecological factor causing unfavourable health impact is the atmospheric pollution. Besides, in towns where there are no ecologically dangerous industries, the main source of pollution is transportation emissions. The second place is occupied by the pollution of drinking water. Soil pollution renders also a noticeable effect especially on the children health. In particular due to wind dispersion of soil particles during in-breath of the atmospheric air.

In this connection the complex of research works on the evaluation of the ecological situation should consist of:

• the evaluation of atmospheric pollution: field research of the structure and intensivity of traffic flows with the calculation and building up the polluted fields; selection on square net and chemical analysis of solid and liquid phase of snow samples calculating the volumes of pollutants per site; the calculation of the field of pollution from stationary sources; measurement of earth level pollutant concentrations of the atmospheric air in various spots to verify the field research data;

• drinking water quality evaluation at the systems of water preparation and at children pre-school institutions (CPI) on the basis of samples selection and chemical analysis;

• soil pollution evaluation based on the square net selection and chemical analysis of soil samples.

On the second stage the research data are complemented with the population health indexes resulted from the methodology of the health risk assessment due to air, soil and drinking water pollution. It is feasible to choose CPI children as a risk cohort for estimation of the health risks since children are more susceptible to environmental hazards whereas preserving their health ensures future health of the nation.

On the third stage the priority problems based on the study of the accumulated data are set and the measures on improvement of the environments, reducing the population’s susceptibility to diseases and health prevention are worked out.

The offered research methodology has been successfully applied by IPE Uro RAN in a number of Russian towns.