Environmental and Occupational Public Health

Excerpt

Environmental health and occupational health and safety have long been established subfields of public health research, policy, and practice (Frumkin 2010). More so perhaps than areas such as infectious disease or health promotion, environmental and occupational health remind us that the health of a society is profoundly affected by its economic system and economic development. Today, the environmental health field is largely concerned with a human-made (anthropogenic) environment brought about by urbanization, the extraction of natural resources, industrial manufacture, the physical separation of home and workplace, and the transportation systems needed to support this mode of economy and pattern of living. Economic development alters the natural environment and sometimes harms ecosystems in terms of the humanly useful services they provide, their diversity, and their resilience. We are coming to understand that all of this has significant consequences for human health.