The article demonstrates that the legal framework of the Russian Federation requires the assessment of public health harm to exercise administrative and criminal sanctions in the event of breach of legislation in the sphere of sanitary and epidemiological welfare and consumer rights protection. Modern scientific evidence of causal relationships between the environment and health, as well as the introduction of risk assessment methods into the work of sanitary services make it possible to create

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... a sufficient body of evidence of the adverse effect of certain environmental factors on public health, especially if health hazard rate is determined as unacceptable. We propose an algorithm for creating an evidential basis of public health harm that includes the assessment of health hazard and special medical and biological research. This algorithm may be used for sanitary and epidemiological investigations, inquiries and expert evaluations. We also provide a description of the elements of the evidential basis on group and individual levels.