In October 2015, the Directorate General for Health asked Santé publique France to issue an opinion on the relevance and feasibility of conducting widespread epidemiological surveillance across all major French industrial regions. Indeed, these areas, which suffer from environmental pollution as well as noise, odor, and visual nuisances, have raised concerns among associations and local residents regarding the health impacts of living near industrial regions. Initially, and in the absence of a definition of an “industrial basin,” an identification method was proposed, notably through a geographic information system. Forty-five basins were thus identified across France. An inventory of the various types of studies conducted around these basins was then compiled to assess their advantages and limitations in the context of monitoring local populations. This work was supplemented by a review of the literature on studies conducted around large industrial zones. In light of these findings, it is proposed to establish a multicenter health monitoring system based on the implementation and subsequent repetition over time of ecological studies conducted around several industrial basins sharing common characteristics. The overall objective of such a monitoring system is to study and track the health risks associated with industrial basins for nearby populations. In a second phase, the industrial basins will be characterized in terms of activities and pollutants in order to form homogeneous groups to be integrated into a multicenter system. This step is a prerequisite for defining a protocol for the epidemiological surveillance of populations living near French industrial basins.