ABSTRACT
The eld of environmental health traditionally focused on the short-term hazards of different chemical, biological, and physical agents; however, the environment is now generally considered to encompass all external factors including diet, housing, and water quality. Accordingly, in Dahlgren and Whitehead’s rainbow of the wider determinants of health (see Chapter 2H), the ‘environment’ can be taken to include all layers of the diagram except the inner layer of ‘age, sex, and constitutional factors’. The environmental determinants of health may be subdivided into the categories listed in Table 2F.1.
