[Environmental concern of clients of an environmental medicine counseling center]. / Umweltbesorgnis bei Klienten einer Umweltmedizinischen Beratungsstelle.

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.