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Historical context, philosophy and principles of environmental health
Published in Stephen Battersby, Clay's Handbook of Environmental Health, 2023
The Australia Department of Health subscribes to the World Health Organization definition of Environmental Health (considered earlier in this chapter) and goes on to state: Environmental health involves those aspects of public health concerned with factors, circumstances, and conditions in the environment or surroundings of humans that can exert an influence on health and well-being.Environmental health provides the basis of public health. Improvements in sanitation, drinking water quality, food safety, disease control, and housing conditions have been central to the significant improvement in quality of life and longevity experienced over the last hundred years.Environmental health practice addresses emerging health risk arising from the pressures that human development places on the environment.[1–2] This definition of environmental health represents a broader, more holistic, approach and understanding. It acknowledges that environmental health covers a range of complex and multidisciplinary issues and moves away from the traditional perspective that environmental health practice is primarily focussed on regulation and enforcement.
History of Chemical Exposure Assessment
Published in Jack Daugherty, Assessment of Chemical Exposures, 2020
Public health is that body of medical knowledge and practice that concerns itself with preservation of the health of the community, as opposed to maintaining the health of individuals within the community. The public health official, then, will want to know what diseases or injuries can be expected from public exposure to a chemical. Environmental health is the science of preserving public health and ecosystems, within the context of the environment, which transcends the proximate community of humanity. Epidemiology is the study of disease occurrence and causes, while health physics deals with radiological exposures, and industrial hygiene deals primarily with occupational exposures only. Occupational epidemiology specifically studies diseases incurred in the workplace, whereas environmental epidemiology concentrates on those encountered in our non-occupational, non-residential surroundings. Toxicology examines the impact of chemicals on the various systems of the body. Environmental toxicology is the study of the impacts that pollutants have on the structure and function of ecological systems.
Surface Functionalized Electrospun Nanofibers for Removal of Toxic Pollutants in Water
Published in Ahmad Fauzi Ismail, Nidal Hilal, Juhana Jaafar, Chris J. Wright, Nanofiber Membranes for Medical, Environmental, and Energy Applications, 2019
Brabu Balusamy, Anitha Senthamizhan, Tamer Uyar
A major public health threat that has developed over the last decades is environmental pollution due to industrialization and societal development, calling for technological support and new policy guidelines. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 12.6 million deaths every year are due to a polluted environment and water pollution [1]. This demands immediate attention toward eliminating water pollution since water is a vital resource for human existence as well as industrial processes. Thus, WHO has devised a standard for the quality of water and prioritized water sanitation and hygiene. A recent report by WHO has revealed that there are approximately 2.1 billion people who lack safe drinking water at home [2]. Water pollution can arise due to various biological agents, heavy metals, organic dyes, pesticides, herbicides, and organic solvents, which can cause a hazardous impact on human and environmental health. To date, various approaches have been adopted for purifying water including filtration, reverse osmosis, precipitation, flocculation, electrodialysis, bio-sorption, and adsorption [3–9]. However, these techniques are expensive, require complex setup, and consume high amounts of energy. This enforces the need for new eco-friendly and affordable methods to deal with water pollution.
Effectiveness of the tropical plants Rhynchospora corymbosa and Coix lacryma-jobi in vertical flow constructed wetlands for municipal primary sewage effluent treatment
Published in International Journal of Phytoremediation, 2023
Oluseyi E. Ewemoje, Lewis Semprini, Brian D. Wood, Abimbola Y. Sangodoyin, Tyler S. Radniecki
As industrialization continues to grow, high-quality freshwater resources are becoming more difficult to find and protect. An assessment of surface water bodies conducted in the United States of America revealed that 40–50% are impaired or threatened (USEPA 2005). These water bodies are impacted by both natural and anthropogenic means, including untreated wastewater discharge. Water pollution, particularly through wastewater discharge, is seen as a threat to human and environmental health because of the transmission of bacterial and viral waterborne diseases and the eutrophication of water bodies leading to potentially toxic algal blooms and low dissolved oxygen concentrations (Cooper et al.2020). The impact of sewage-contaminated surface waters is greatest in developing countries where waterborne diseases remain a major public health threat (WHO and UNICEF 2017).
Off-grid gasoline-powered generators: pollutants’ footprints and health risk assessment in Nigeria
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2023
Solomon O. Giwa, Collins N. Nwaokocha, David O. Samuel
Air pollution is reportedly the world’s largest single environmental health risk renowned for causing a wide range of diseases, such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and recently, lung cancer (United Nations Environmental Protection (UNEP) Year Book 2014). Exposure levels have increased significantly in recent years in some parts of the world, especially rapidly industrializing countries with large populations. According to the World Health Organization, around 7 million premature deaths are recorded annually due to air pollution, thereby, ranking air pollution as the third risk factor causing premature deaths globally. Almost half of this figure is as a result of the ambient air pollution from automobiles and electricity generation. In almost all the regions, at least two-thirds of premature deaths are caused by exposure to PM while the remaining one-third is due to a combination of other pollutants of which O3 is prominent (World Health Organization 2014; Caiazzo et al. 2013).
Sentinel species for biomonitoring and biosurveillance of environmental heavy metals in Nigeria
Published in Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part C, 2022
Cecilia Nwadiuto Amadi, Chiara Frazzoli, Orish Ebere Orisakwe
Animals are continually exposed to toxic effects of compounds found in the environment arising from rapid industrial development and anthropogenic activities.154 Consistent monitoring of environmental pollutants is important for assessing environmental health, detecting changes in environmental quality, and determining if regulatory limits for safety have been exceeded.155,156