Dear Readers,

The quarterly HYGEIA public health (ISSN 1509-1945) is the second quarterly of the Polish Society of Hygiene (www.pth.pl) - after Problemy Higieny i Epidemiologii (www.phie.pl). It is a continuation of Hygeia journal published between 1998-2004. It publishes papers from a broad spectrum of public health problems.

The journal is published in two versions:

1. a traditional printed version available upon subscription at a moderate price, and
   
2. an electronic version prepared according to the best rules of modern editing of scientific journals. It is worth stressing that the electronic version with full texts of papers in the PDF format of all issues published so far, is offered free of charge.

HYGEA public health has been created to function as a modern scientific journal, with an International Scientific Board, oriented towards problems of public health - including the area of expertise of Polish State Sanitary Inspection. International Scientific Board pays special attention to the scientific quality of published papers, therefore all the submitted articles are reviewed according to standard regulations of scientific journals. These ambitious assumptions will be realized only when the publishing authors will be specialists of the health care sector, of scientific institutes, of State Sanitary Inspection, of universities of medical sciences, physical education, biology and natural science, with departments focusing on various aspects of health of human individuals and population. We invite authors of these areas of interest to submit their articles to our journal for publication. It will result in mutual advantage: HYGEA public health will become a representative forum of information exchange and of discussion in public health area, receiving well-earned recognition, and the authors of published papers will gather more points for their individual and institutional scientific activity.