ABSTRACT
The relationship between the natural environment and health When we carefully apply sun-tan lotion before going out on a sunny day, the link between ‘the environment’ and health is all too clear. The intensity of the sun caused by the thinning of the ozone layer is not something that we can easily ignore given the evidence of the increasing incidence of skin cancer. The consequences for the nation’s health of the depletion of ozone is but one example of the impact of the environment upon our health. Climate change is a major hazard for humanity, calling into question our systems of industry, agriculture, fishing and food production. Although it is difficult to predict how – and in which direction – the climate will change and with what results, a change in disease patterns worldwide seems to be a likely result (McMichael, 1993) (Box 5.1). The impact of global warming on health in the UK was the subject of a 1992 report by the government’s Public Health Laboratory. It
concluded that this would include the reintroduction of permanent endemic plague foci among rural rat populations; the arrival of the heart worm in Britain; an explosion in cockroach numbers with attendant health problems; and an increase in domestic mites (see Tindale, 1996). Malaria may well reappear in the UK – it was a permanent feature in the Middle Ages – with malarial insects having travelled in long-distance planes being able to survive in the warmer climate and then breed in this country (Brown, 1998). From even before the moment of conception our health is influenced by our environment, and to a greater or lesser extent all the topics covered in the following chapters – housing, food, employment – have an impact on the health of the population. Because of the extraordinary advances made by science and technology over the last century, it is arguable that nature no longer exists independently of humanity – it has been subordinated to human purposes (McKibben, 1990). The achievements of modern civilisation depend upon the use of the raw materials of nature: water, wood, coal, oil and gas have all
been harnessed to create industrial societies. These processes can also be harmful to human health: chemicals released into rivers, pollutants which occur because of certain industrial processes, pesticides which get into our food.
