Lifestyles and Living Environments

The Lifestyles and Living Environments Unit 

  • acts as a specialist in planetary health and welfare
  • studies and supports healthy, safe and sustainable lifestyles and living environments 
  • acts as a specialist in nutrition
  • monitors and assesses the nutritional status of the population and promotes the prevention of obesity
  • develops and maintains the national nutrition research infrastructure
  • develops and assesses evidence-based practices to promote healthy and sustainable lifestyles and to prevent chronic diseases
  • studies risk factors and health inequalities related to lifestyles and develops methods to identify and support specific risk groups
  • acts as a specialist in healthy living environments, with a focus on climate change, urbanisation and a sustainable transition
  • produces and assesses data on the threats to the living environment and on health impacts of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures
  • produces and processes data on the exposure of the population to chemical compounds and specialises in the analysis of persistent organic pollutants.

Unit teams

  • Chemical Risks
  • Environmental Health
  • Interventions
  • Nutrition

Contact details

Anne Hyvärinen
Head of Unit
tel. +358 29 524 6364
E-mail: firstname.lastname@thl.fi

Postal address
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)
Lifestyles and Living Environments Unit
P.O. Box 75
FI-70701 Kuopio, Finland

Information about the testing laboratory

Finnish Accreditation Service. Link to an external websiteAvautuu uudessa välilehdessä

The laboratory’s scope of accreditation on the FINAS websiteLink to an external websiteOpens in a new tab

The unit is a FINAS accredited testing laboratory T077. It has been accredited according to the standard SFS-EN ISO/IEC 17025:2017 and its scope of accreditation is available on the website of FINAS (Finnish Accreditation Service).