[Environmental concern of clients of an environmental medicine counseling center]

Environmental apprehensiveness and anxiety are often regarded as being responsible for unspecific health complaints in the context of environmental exposures if toxicological findings cannot explain them. However, there is a lack of empirical data on the influence exercised by environmental anxiety. A German adaptation of the American Environmental Worry Scale [1] was developed. The questionnaire has been used in a study on clients of the Consultation Centre for Environmental Medicine (CCEM). These clients (n = 51) were compared with a control group of clients of a vaccination centre (n = 238). As expected, the clients of the CCEM showed higher values of environmental worry. Moreover, the clients of the CCEM revealed scores of trait-anxiety which were more than one standard deviation above the level of the reference group. Environmental worry was weakly associated with a higher degree of trait-anxiety.