Title: Environmental Determinants of Health | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Environmental Determinants of Health
Environmental Determinants of Health
ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
Bibliography

Content: Such classifications are necessary to ensure appropriate methods for researching and understanding the extent of health problems in the world. The workplace often serves as a laboratory for understanding the relationship between environmental exposures and health. It serves as a laboratory because, in their occupational environment, workers tend to be exposed to measurable amounts of pollution. This fact allows occupational health researchers and epidemiologists to link adverse health outcomes to these environmental factors. If no link between a workplace pollutant and worker ill-health can be demonstrated, then that pollutant is unlikely to have measurable consequences for human health beyond the work environment owing to comparative lack of frequency and concentration of exposure experienced by those not working in that specific environment. One notable exception, however, is that class of people who are more susceptible to ill-effects even from low levels of exposure. An emerging concern with great potential impact on public health relates to upstream, or distant, determinants of health (the exposures are far apart in time or space from the witnessed ill-effects) including as policies that drive current levels of population growth, consumption and waste issues, and the uses of technology. For example, the environmental, transboundary transport of contaminants through the food chain has resulted in global chemical contamination. Other transboundary issues include acid precipitation, ozone, greenhouse gasses, and hazardous wastes. Global ecological integrity (i.e., the ability of life-support systems to sustain themselves in the presence of polluting forces) and global change (including concerns about climate change from global warming, ozone depletion, and the loss of biodiversity) have given people reason to adopt the WHO maxim: "