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Environmental Problems and Their Influence on People’s Health

Environmental factors affect people’s health in important ways, both positive and negative. Positive environmental factors sustain health, and promoting them is preventive medicine. They include:

o sources of nutrition (farming, hunting, fishing);

o water (drinking, cooking, cleaning, sanitation);

o air quality;

o ozone layer (protection from UV, cancers, etc);

o space for exercise and recreation;

o sanitation (waste, recycling)

Negative environmental factors are threats to health, and controlling them is public environmental health. They include:

o environmental conditions favoring disease vectors;

o invasive biota (viruses, bacteria, etc);

o environmental disruptions: floods, droughts, storms, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes;

o air quality: pollen and pollution leading to respiratory diseases or cancers;

o water quality: biotic and abiotic contaminants; integrity of water transport and treatment infrastructure;

o monitoring and management of municipal, agricultural, industrial outflows to the environment (gases, liquids, solid wastes);

o human changes of the environment that create conditions that favour disease; disturb and release noxious levels of previously bound chemicals (e.g. released mercury becomes poison); create temporary, intense, life-threatening heat islands (e.g. urban heat waves); result from nuclear, biological or chemical warfare or terrorism.

Since ancient time nature has served man, being the source of his life. For thousands of years people lived in harmony with environment and it seemed to them that natural riches were unlimited. But with the development of civilization man’s interference in nature began to increase.

Large cities with thousands of smoky industrial enterprises appear all over the world today. The by-products of their activity pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land we grow grain and vegetables on.

Every year world industry pollutes the atmosphere with about 1,000 million tons of dust and other harmful substances. Many cities suffer from smog. Vast forests are cut and burn in fire. Their disappearance upsets the oxygen balance. As a result some rare species of animals, birds, fish and plants disappear forever, a number of rivers and lakes dry up.

The pollution of air and the world’s ocean, destruction of the ozone layer is the result of man’s careless interaction with nature, a sign of the ecological crises.

Environmental protection is of a universal concern. That is why serious measures to create a system of ecological security should be taken.

Some progress has been already made in this direction. As many as 159 countries - members of the UNO - have set up environmental protection agencies. Numerous conferences have been held by these agencies to discuss problems facing ecologically poor regions including the Aral Sea, the South Urals, Kuzbass, Donbass, Semipalatinsk and Chornobyl. An international environmental research centre has been set up on Lake Baikal. The international organization Greenpeace is also doing much to preserve the environment.

But these are only the initial steps and they must be carried onward to protect nature, to save life on the planet not only for the sake of the present but also for the future generations.

1. Environmental factors affect people’s health in important ways, both positive and negative, don’t they?

2. What is preventive medicine?

3. What do positive environmental factors include?

4. Is controlling negative environmental factors public environmental health?

5. What negative environmental factors do you know?

6. How did the development of civilization affect nature?

7. How much dust and other harmful substances are released to the atmosphere every year?

8. What does upset the oxygen balance?

9. What signs of the ecological crises are there?

10. What serious measurements are taken to create a system of ecological security?

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