WIT's World Ecology Report - Vol. 08, No. 2 - Critical Issues in Health and the Environment (WIT, 1996, 16 pages): The Environment as a Cause of Human Disease

WIT's World Ecology Report - Vol. 08, No. 2 - Critical Issues in Health and the Environment (WIT, 1996, 16 pages)

		(introduction...)
		The Environment as a Cause of Human Disease
		Global Climate Changes and Infectious Diseases
		Health in Developing Nations
		Child Health and the Environment
		Toxic Waste and Childhood Development
		Environmental Factors and Women's Health
		Ocular Effects of Air Pollution
		Environmental Causes of Respiratory Disease
		Noise: A Threatening Pollutant
		Urban Living and the Skin The Problems and the Solutions
		The Limitation of Population Growth on Nutritional Sufficiency for the Future
		Effectiveness of Global Environmental Health Policies: The View From Africa
		Health Effect Assessment of Toxic Waste and Community Involvement
		Occupational Health Hazards
		Community Implications of Hazardous Waste Sites
		Can Neighborhood Quality in Devastated United States Cities be Improved
		Elimination of Toxic Industrial Wastes Through Effective Environmental Management
		Biodiversity Prospecting: Using Biodiversity to Promote Human Health, Conservation and Sustainable Development
		POINT OF VIEW: Health and Development

The Environment as a Cause of Human Disease

Bernard D. Goldstein, MD
Director
Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute
Piscataway, New Jersey, USA

The relationship between human health and the environment is a complex one. While disregard for the environment can adversely effect human health, societies rife with poverty and diseases have little incentive to deal with long-term environmental issues; they have to focus on day-to-day survival. However, example after example shows us that failure to protect the environment imperils human health, both today and tomorrow.

Although the effects of air pollution on our health are now well recognized, it is not always clear to what extent an environmental pollutant is responsible for disease. In some cases, it may act as a catalyst, activating genetic factors that by themselves do not cause disease. Environmental insults may also indirectly endanger human health; for example, deforestation can create an area of erosion that allows devastating flooding, as in the

Bay of Bengal in 1991. Efforts toward sustainable economic development that fail to consider the complex, essential relationship between human health and the environment are doomed to failure.

Populations Affected by Various Infectious Diseases, 1993

Disease	Deaths	Incidence ¹
Acute Respiratory Infections	4.1 million	248 million
Diarrheal Diseases	3.0 million	1.8 billion
Tuberculosis	2.7 million	8.8 million
Malaria	2.0 million	300-500 million (prevalence ²)
Measles	1.2 million	45 million
Hepatitis B	1.0 million	2.2 million
HIV/AIDS	700,000	2-3 million
Whopping Cough (pertussis)	360,000	4.3 million
Bacterial Meningitis	210,000	1.2 million (prevalence ²)
Schistosomiasis	200,000	200 million (prevalence ²)
Leishmaniasis	197,000	7.2 million
Yellow Fever	30,000	200,000
Dengue/DHF	23,000	560,000
Japanese Encephalitis	11,000	40,000
Cholera	6,800	380,000
Polio	5,500	110,000

1 Number of new cases of a particular disease reported during a certain period of time.
² Number of cases of a particular disease reported during a certain period of time.
SOURCES: Report of the Director-General, The World Health Report 1995: Bridging the Gaps (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1995); malaria data from "World Malaria Situation in 1992, Part I: Middle South Asia, Eastern Asia and Oceania," Weekly Epidemiological Record, October 21, 1994: HIV/AIDS incidence data from Aaron Sachs, "HIV/AIDS Cases Rising Steadily," in Lester R. Brown, Hat Kane, and David Malin Roodman, Vital Signs 1994 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994).