Abstract
This is part two of two overview chapters of the most important contemporary environmental health challenges. This second chapter discusses environmental health as a socio-political and ethical issue. It argues that effectively moving towards healthier and sustainable societies requires not only sound scientific knowledge but also policies, medical practices, healthcare systems, and health-related attitudes and behaviors that are informed by a deep socio-political understanding and that reflect a new integrated approach to environment and health. The need for contemporary technological societies to develop mechanisms like education, environmental and health governance, and public accountability for environmental health equity and justice is highlighted. The chapter concludes by proposing a multidimensional framework, based on both natural and social sciences, for the transition to healthy and sustainable societies and for improving the welfare of all people, as well as future research directions for environmental health sciences.
TopIntroduction
With the increasing awareness of and concern for environmental issues and impacts on human health in the last century or so, the field of environmental health has burgeoned. Environmental exposures and related human health impacts or health problems and their environmental causes have extensively been studied in recent decades (World Health Organization (WHO), 2006A; WHO, 2006B; WHO, 2007, WHO, 2012, WHO, 2013A; WHO, 2014; Bonnefoi, et al., 2010; Bollati & Baccarelli, 2010; Barouki, Gluckman, Grandjean, Hanson, & Heindel, 2012; Pruess-Ustuen et al., 2014; Herceg &Vaissière, 2011; Herceg, 2016; Seralini, Mesnage, Clair, Gress, de Vendomois & Cellier, 2011; Séralini, Clair, Mesnage, Gress, Defarge & Spiroux de Vendômois, 2014; Larkin & Hystad 2017; Lytras & Papadopoulou, 2018; Papadopoulou, Lytras & Marouli, 2018; Bagasra & Bagasra, 2019). Environmental health is surely a very significant field of study nowadays since escalating environmental and health problems are interdependent; climate change is further enhancing environmental impacts on human health (Charron, 2012). Natural scientists have also investigated appropriate methods to document and evaluate such relations (Wild, 2005; Wild, Scalbert & Herceg, 2013; Rappaport & Smith, 2010; Lioy & Rappaport, 2011; Vrijheid, Casas, Bergstrom, Carmichael, Cordier, Eggesbo & Nieuwenhuijsen, 2012;Vrijheid, Slama, Robinson, Chatzi, Coen, van den Hazel, & Nieuwenhuijsen 2014;Vrijheid, 2014; Buck Louis, Smarr & Patel, 2017; Jeanette et al., 2017; Sarigiannis, 2017; Sarigiannis, Karakitsios, Handakas, Papadaki, Chapizanis, & Gotti, 2018; Sarigiannis, Gotti, Handakas, & Karakitsios, 2018; Sarigiannis, 2019) as well as to assess related risks (Hines et al., 2010; Domingo & Gine Bordonaba, 2011; Elliott, Briggs, Morris, et al. 2001; Myers et al., 2016; Dennis et al., 2017; Turner et al., 2017). On the basis of this vastly expanded knowledge, many significant successes have been achieved in the field of health and medicine, with new cures for previously deadly diseases and with the subsequent lengthening of the average human life.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Environmental Hazard: Is a substance, a state, or an event that has the potential to cause harm on people’s health and/or the environment
Personalized Medicine: is a therapeutic approach in which the medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or products are tailored to the individual’s therapy scheme and/or preventive care, with the use of an individual's genetic and epigenetic information.
Sustainability: Refers to a way of life and social organization that allow people to meet their needs but within the limits of natural ecosystems, ensuring healthy ecosystems and leading to viable economies and socially cohesive and healthy communities. Integration, connectedness and social responsibility are important elements of sustainability.
Environmental Risk Analysis: Is the effort to estimate the chance that an environmental hazard may cause harm. Thus, it explores and tries to manage uncertainties and the significance of potential impacts, while it includes risk assessment but also risk perception.
Environmental Risk: Expresses the probability of suffering some harm (including injury, disease, death, economic loss, or damage to environmental components, etc.) because of an exposure to an environmental hazard. It can also mean exposure to an environmental peril.
Political Ecology: Studies the interactions between environmental issues and the socio-political context and looks to social, political and economic factors for the causes and the solutions to environmental problems.
Wellness: Is a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being.
Exposome: The totality of environmental exposures from conception onward, assessing the multitude of human exposures across the life.
Political Economy: Is a branch of economics that studies on the one hand the organization of the economic activities in human societies, and on the other the relation and interaction of political and economic institutions and processes.