Environmental Factors Affecting Health Athena （环境因素影响健康雅典娜）.pdfVIP

Environmental Factors Affecting Health Environmental factors affect human health in important ways, both positive and negative. − Positive environmental factors sustain health, and promoting them is preventive medicine. They include: • sources of nutrition (fa rming : soil quality, water availability, biodiversity/bio-integrity, genetically modified organisms (GMOs); hunting, fishing: wildlife, fish populations.) • water (drinking, cooking; cleaning / sanitation); • air quality; • ozone layer (protection from UV, cancers, etc); • space for exercise and recreation; • sanitation / waste recycling and disposal. − Negative environmental factors are threats to health, and controlling them is public environmental health. They include: • environmental conditions favouring disease vectors (endemic and exotic vectors); • invasive biota (viruses, bacteria, etc), their hosts and vectors; • environmental disruptions: floods, Courtesy of WHO droughts, storms, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes; • air quality: pollen and pollution leading to respiratory diseases or cancers; • water quality: biotic and abiotic contaminants; integrity of water transport and treatment infrastructure; • monitoring and management of municipal, agricultural, industrial outflows to the environment (gases, liquids, solid wastes); • human changes of the environment that o create conditions that favour disease; o disturb and release noxious levels of previously bound chemicals (e.g. mercury released becomes poison) or biota (e.g. methane rele