Your Health and Your Environment

People are not only surrounded by their environment but constantly contribute to it with every behavior, including breathing. Everything we  consume or even touch can affect our environment. An important step of achieving a healthy environment is to determine how to live in total surrounding conditions with minimal or improving effects upon it. 

The frontline in public health has become a struggle to create a health-promoting environment where the healthy choices are also the easy choices. Action to tackle smoking and encourage physical exercise and healthy eating are priorities, but success has been mixed. Rates of obesity are expected to rise despite our efforts. Obesity can increase the risk of (adult-onset) type 2 diabetes by as much as 34 fold, and diabetes is a major risk factor for amputations, blindness, kidney failure, and heart disease. The most effective weight loss strategies are those that include an increase in overall physical activity. In a recent type 2 diabetes trial, weight loss and physical activity were more effective in controlling the disease than medication. In addition, for treatment of relatively mild cases of anxiety and depression, physical activity is as effective as the most commonly prescribed medications. How can we honestly say we encourage people to walk, jog, or bicycle when there is no safe or welcoming place to pursue these “life-saving” activities. 

 

Respiratory disease, especially asthma, is increasing yearly in the U.S. population. Bad air makes lung diseases, especially asthma, worse. The more hours in automobiles, driving over impervious highways that generate massive tree-removal, clearly degrade air quality. When the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 brought about a reduction in auto use by 22.5%, asthma admissions to ERs and hospitals also decreased by 41.6%. Less driving, better public transport, well designed landscape and residential density will improve air quality more than will additional roadways, yet we are unable to see the big picture.

Climate change will also add to health threats, with more heat waves set to increase early deaths among older people, as well as food-borne diseases, such as salmonella, and a longer hay fever season. Hurricanes and severe weather puts us all at risk. With global warming we are threatened with even more storms developing in ever warming ocean waters. As seen with hurricane Katrina our elderly, people in hospital and nursing homes, children, pets and the poverty stricken are all at a higher risk when severe weather strikes.

Another concern is the potential impact of higher temperatures and heavier rainfall events on waterborne diseases. Heavy rainfall and associated flooding can flush bacteria, sewage, fertilizers and other organic wastes into waterways and aquifers. A significant number of waterborne disease outbreaks across North America, including the E. coli outbreak were preceded by extreme precipitation events. Higher temperatures tend to increase bacterial levels and can encourage the growth of toxic organisms, including those responsible for red tides (toxic algal outbreaks).

Warmer weather may also make conditions more favorable for the establishment and proliferation of vector-borne diseases by encouraging the northward migration of species of mosquitoes, ticks and fleas, and by speeding pathogen development rates. Some diseases of potential concern include malaria, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and Eastern and Western Equine Encephalitis. Mosquito-borne diseases, such as West Nile virus and malaria, may also be able to exploit an increase in breeding grounds resulting from increased flooding.

You can see by these examples how closely our personal health is related to the health of our environment. By understanding how intertwined people are to the planet we can begin to focus on making our environment safer and healthier and by doing this both our health and our planet will improve. These examples also show us how vital it is that we all take responsibility for our choices in life and that many of our choices impact not only us but the environment we all live in.